Electrobes' sumpless 40Br

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Electrobes

Electrobes

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Thanks Man, I am LOVING that clam, well worth the removal of the leather and ricordia rock. :)
 
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Stand ReMod/Control Board plus other added Upgrades

So I finally decided to get off my butt and get some things done. I had, for the longest time, wanted to do several things that I just never got to:

1) Make my tank's info (Temp at the time) view-able WiFi and Cellular networks.

2) I wanted to have all my equipment (Not just the lights and temp stuff) controllable.

3) I was sick of my "Drawer" control board as the toll of pulling the drawer and dragging wires whenever I did it bugged me deeply. I wanted to have a nice and clean control board that could hide but be easily accessible when needed.

The above is a tall order and I have graciously given a weekend, with the house to myself, to complete this project unhindered. (I am a house dad to a two year old). I didn't have much time to plan this out well, so I needed to have a lot of measurements accurate, or just sheer dumb luck.

After obtaining what I thought were good measurements I went off to Home Depot and got the necessary materials to build the control board.

I started the project by removing the lights and semi-canopy off the tank.







I wanted it to be fairly consistent with my current stand. The first thing that needed to be done was to remove all three bottom drawers of the stand, and knock out the supports that let them slide in and out of the stand. I could only remove the first two, because I still had to remove the equipment from the top (of the three) drawer.



The next part involved cutting off the storage part of each of the two drawers, and keeping only the faces, so that I could later attach them together forming a door.







Before I could remove the drawer with the equipment, I had to remove the equipment! It's amazing how much stuff could fit in there!







I finally got the last drawer out, plus I was intermittently doing the control board. It involved a little black staining, and some bordering, but it came out nice.





Here's me gluing the border onto the back board.



I finally got the third drawer face and finished the "door".



Now it was time to add the equipment to the control board.







I then received my new PM1 from Neptune, so I could have some pH control-ability in the future (More on that later).



Overall the project is a major success given a weekend's time. I am so stoked as I bought a year subsciption to dyndns, and I can now control all of my equipment on my phone, given I have WiFi or am within range of a cell tower. My only project left is to add a doser controlled by the controller via the pH probe. The tank suffers from a fairly low pH, and I want to remedy that by having the pH monitor control the flow of Kalk water, and the ATO using regular RO/DI. I hope it works in keeping the pH stable.. and helps with keeping the Calcium and Alk up.. as they are often times too low even with me adding additives fairly regularly.

Here's the tank now:

IMG_3745 (Medium).JPG
IMG_3747 (Medium).JPG
 
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I also just got a Flameback Angel for the tank! He has been in QT for about a week and looks absolutely healthy and amazing. He's a great eater! Unfortunately he is hiding and I didn't want to spook him.



 
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Mame Skimmer Clone Fun

My tank has been doing pretty well. As it grows up, it needs me less and less... which makes me a bit bored in my free-time as I am usually occupied by something with the tank. I was perusing some older articles, threads, etc when I came across a "micro-skimmer". I eventually landed on this article by Reef Builders:


Mame Skimmer III: ultimate unboxing of a novel concept aquarium product


I thought it looked fun, and decided I could make something pretty similar. By no means did I think I could ever.. ever, ever, eeeeever skim my tank with this, but I thought having something like this would just be fun in the tank. If nothing else.. at least the tank would get some aeration!


So I went to my LFS (I try to support them when I can), and luckily found the needed materials:





What you see is the small Marineland substrate vacuum, rigid airline, freezer airline, wooden air stones, and I think that's it.


Next I needed to find a way to keep this fun device solid and straight on the tank. I have some acrylic, so I tinkered a bit and came up with this (Not pictured is a small drill press I own):

















I then drilled an extra hole on the top of the vacuum to allow for some freezer airline to pass through:











I also have a secret door on the side of the "canopy". I decided to use it to hold (And hide) the supposed skimmer collection cup:





Some pics of the completed skimmer:








Here's everything hooked up, using a Luft Pump I had laying around. Also.. I need to add an elbow to the skimmate exit:





Here it is running in the tank. It doesn't leak any microbubbles into the tank, and looks cool!








This unit probably won't last long as I also decided to give my Deltec MCE300 one last chance after I mod it. If it doesn't work, I'll go right back to being technically skimmerless, and put this fun device back on. Here's a couple pics of the skimmer mod I am doing... adding a bubble plate and dremeled out some more exit holes at the bottom of the skimmer.





 

Mastering the art of locking and unlocking water pathways: What type of valves do you have on your aquarium plumbing?

  • Ball valves.

    Votes: 37 53.6%
  • Gate valves.

    Votes: 37 53.6%
  • Check valves.

    Votes: 15 21.7%
  • None.

    Votes: 16 23.2%
  • Other.

    Votes: 6 8.7%

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