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pickupman66
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Thanks Rev.
Pickupman66"s Downsized Simplified 66 rimless
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pickupman66
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Shame on me yet again. I have not updated this thread in 6 months yet I hit R2R every darn day almost. For those who care, Sorry. LOL. ON to the update!!!!
1. No major changes in the tank with one exception. My trusty Jebao DC6000 decided it didnt want to restart on its own after a cleaning. I believe it is at LEAST 6 years old. as I had it 2 years externally on my 180 for a closed loop and then 4 years on this box as the return pump. I could get it to restart with my fingers by manually turning the impeller until it hooked up, but that was a PAIN! Soooo.. it was replaced with a brand new Jebao DCP-6500 Sine Wave pump. WOAH. this dude is SILENT.. and Powerful. I am running it at 45% and i cannot hear it at all. Dead silent. I went back to Jebao because of the successes I have had with the previous pump and the current wave pumps. The price was good too as I had amazon reward points to pay for it. YAY!!!!
2. I have dialed in the hydras to a very happy spot. it didnt take me long. I used the David Saxby program and then modified it to give me a 12 hour lighting cycle with a lunar period and a dark period after midnight. I really like this program and my tank seems to as well. images below of the chart and Here is a link to the file.
3. I have done an OK job keeping up with water changes on a monthly basis but there have been some 2 month stretches in there. The tank has just been on Auto pilot and cruising along.
4. Lost the blue jaw trigger. We had some sort of large splashing event that scared it so bad that he went into hiding and never came out to eat again. It was freaky. one day, this fish was always out and ate like a pig. voraciously. then the next day, he stayed hidden and would not come out. would not eat. lost him about 2 weeks later. so sad.
5. Replaced the trigger with a beautiful long nose butterfly. I needed some yellow in the tank and this guy fit the bill. probably a little large for the tank right now, but it is doing well and eats extremely well. such a cool fish. I love to watch him hunt among the zoas like the copperband used to.
6. New coal additions: large piece of hollywood stunner. Grows like crazy. Replaced the bright red rock amen with another identical one. And that is it.
7. Coral growth has been very steady and good on the two Stags. I am very pleased with them. I did have an incident with the hollywood Stunner getting too large and stinging the purple stag. also the Green nepthea will be cut back to a single stalk here in the coming days. it has done incredibly well lately.
ill post photos in the next post below.
1. No major changes in the tank with one exception. My trusty Jebao DC6000 decided it didnt want to restart on its own after a cleaning. I believe it is at LEAST 6 years old. as I had it 2 years externally on my 180 for a closed loop and then 4 years on this box as the return pump. I could get it to restart with my fingers by manually turning the impeller until it hooked up, but that was a PAIN! Soooo.. it was replaced with a brand new Jebao DCP-6500 Sine Wave pump. WOAH. this dude is SILENT.. and Powerful. I am running it at 45% and i cannot hear it at all. Dead silent. I went back to Jebao because of the successes I have had with the previous pump and the current wave pumps. The price was good too as I had amazon reward points to pay for it. YAY!!!!
2. I have dialed in the hydras to a very happy spot. it didnt take me long. I used the David Saxby program and then modified it to give me a 12 hour lighting cycle with a lunar period and a dark period after midnight. I really like this program and my tank seems to as well. images below of the chart and Here is a link to the file.
3. I have done an OK job keeping up with water changes on a monthly basis but there have been some 2 month stretches in there. The tank has just been on Auto pilot and cruising along.
4. Lost the blue jaw trigger. We had some sort of large splashing event that scared it so bad that he went into hiding and never came out to eat again. It was freaky. one day, this fish was always out and ate like a pig. voraciously. then the next day, he stayed hidden and would not come out. would not eat. lost him about 2 weeks later. so sad.
5. Replaced the trigger with a beautiful long nose butterfly. I needed some yellow in the tank and this guy fit the bill. probably a little large for the tank right now, but it is doing well and eats extremely well. such a cool fish. I love to watch him hunt among the zoas like the copperband used to.
6. New coal additions: large piece of hollywood stunner. Grows like crazy. Replaced the bright red rock amen with another identical one. And that is it.
7. Coral growth has been very steady and good on the two Stags. I am very pleased with them. I did have an incident with the hollywood Stunner getting too large and stinging the purple stag. also the Green nepthea will be cut back to a single stalk here in the coming days. it has done incredibly well lately.
ill post photos in the next post below.
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pickupman66
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pickupman66
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how many of you go back and read old posts on your build threads? I did today. they were horrendous. no photos. Darn photobucket. so today, I edited a number of KEY old posts to get the original images back in there. this should help the thread make better sense to anyone new to it. Hope you guys are enjoying the thread.
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pickupman66
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Water change... New butterfly came down with crypt so he is in a hospital tank. Others who didn't want to play in the trap are being fed metroplex daily.
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pickupman66
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The last two weeks have been interesting to say the least. One thursday evening, my Archon controller started to reboot. somehow it was not happy and I could not get it stable to connect to the buss and my wifi. I have NO CLUE what happened to it. after an hour of trying to get it back up, I gave up and swapped essential life controls over to a power strip and what outlets remained on and just left the head unit unplugged from the buss. The next am, I power cycled it yet again and still nothing.
After the issues the previous night, I decided i needed to start to migrate to another control system. to control what I currently have with my Archon, I would need 12-16 outlets plus some extra modules. we are talking serious $$$ for an Apex system (over $1000) or any other off the shelf controller. I had amassed my Archon up over 6 years or more so there was no initial sticker shock. Forking over that kind of dough would have left me and my reef in the doghouse.....
Fortunately I have been following the Reef-pi opensource controller thread and I have seen some similarities to the Archon in this setup (mainly the linux part). So, i made the decision and calculation that I could get into the reef-pi and get it started for about $150. Not bad. However it wont do all that my Archon can do at this point, but i can see the potential. Hopefully I can lend my beta team experiences with this as well.
Please go check out the Reef-pi here. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...tank-controller-based-on-raspberry-pi.289256/
While it ended up at $165 or so plus some extraneous parts and pieces I already had, I am quite pleased considering a few things:
Due to a busy week ahead, I had to just order and let everything come in.
My first attempt at Soldering. Not too bad. a but heavy with the big wires but I was pleased. This is THE temperature circuit. I have 3 sensors connected to this portion.
Here is the system after adding in the power supply and the Control for 8 outlets. The rainbow colors go from the top of the board and the GPIO pins down to the darlington where it then steps the signaling up to 12volts and delivers it to the DB9 connector.
Here is the outside of my project box. Unfortunatley the plastic was too thick for the connectors so I had to grind it down with my angle grinder on the inside for them to thread in. but hey, it works well now.
Goodies inside the box
Here is a Frtizing schematic of what I have built here.
to add 8 more channels I will add another breadboard and complete that circuitry probably next month
RJ45 breakout I had purchased for my Archon. this allows me to signal along a standard cat5E cable from the control box to the side of my tank. Connected here is the ATO float switch (white and blue) and two (now 3) temperature probes. They use power from the system delivered over the Cat5e and signal back on the yellow. Cool thing about these types of probes is that they each have a different address yet signal across the same circuit. so I can monitor the tank, Sump and the room temp. ***To clarify, I did not us the Raspberry PI ethernet jack in this at all.
SO, all that said now, I have control of 8 devices on my system. the reef-pi is controlling the heater and the auto top off.
Some of the graphing. good to see this data.
I still have to implement PH monitoring and hopefully Salinity Monitoring along with PWM control for Jebao pumps. This is all still in development.
After the issues the previous night, I decided i needed to start to migrate to another control system. to control what I currently have with my Archon, I would need 12-16 outlets plus some extra modules. we are talking serious $$$ for an Apex system (over $1000) or any other off the shelf controller. I had amassed my Archon up over 6 years or more so there was no initial sticker shock. Forking over that kind of dough would have left me and my reef in the doghouse.....
Fortunately I have been following the Reef-pi opensource controller thread and I have seen some similarities to the Archon in this setup (mainly the linux part). So, i made the decision and calculation that I could get into the reef-pi and get it started for about $150. Not bad. However it wont do all that my Archon can do at this point, but i can see the potential. Hopefully I can lend my beta team experiences with this as well.
Please go check out the Reef-pi here. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...tank-controller-based-on-raspberry-pi.289256/
While it ended up at $165 or so plus some extraneous parts and pieces I already had, I am quite pleased considering a few things:
- I have never worked with a Raspberry Pi before
- I have never soldered in any way shape or form. ever. I have wanted to, and even got a nice soldering iron for christmas.
- Pi 3b ( you can get the 3b+ for $39.99 but I messed up and got wrong one)
- American DJ SRP8 Power strip with 8 relay controlled outlets (12 volt relays)
- Cable for the SRP8
- DB9 Connector breakouts for the SRP8 control circuits
- DS18B20 thermometers and resistors for them to work properly.
- 12 Volt power supply
- Buck Boost converter (convert the 12v down to 5v) - I really liked this one because of the readout on it.
- Perma-Proto Hat
- Darlington ULN2803a (step up from the 5v signal to the 12v for relays)
- Jumper wires
Due to a busy week ahead, I had to just order and let everything come in.
My first attempt at Soldering. Not too bad. a but heavy with the big wires but I was pleased. This is THE temperature circuit. I have 3 sensors connected to this portion.
Here is the system after adding in the power supply and the Control for 8 outlets. The rainbow colors go from the top of the board and the GPIO pins down to the darlington where it then steps the signaling up to 12volts and delivers it to the DB9 connector.
Here is the outside of my project box. Unfortunatley the plastic was too thick for the connectors so I had to grind it down with my angle grinder on the inside for them to thread in. but hey, it works well now.
Goodies inside the box
Here is a Frtizing schematic of what I have built here.
to add 8 more channels I will add another breadboard and complete that circuitry probably next month
RJ45 breakout I had purchased for my Archon. this allows me to signal along a standard cat5E cable from the control box to the side of my tank. Connected here is the ATO float switch (white and blue) and two (now 3) temperature probes. They use power from the system delivered over the Cat5e and signal back on the yellow. Cool thing about these types of probes is that they each have a different address yet signal across the same circuit. so I can monitor the tank, Sump and the room temp. ***To clarify, I did not us the Raspberry PI ethernet jack in this at all.
SO, all that said now, I have control of 8 devices on my system. the reef-pi is controlling the heater and the auto top off.
Some of the graphing. good to see this data.
I still have to implement PH monitoring and hopefully Salinity Monitoring along with PWM control for Jebao pumps. This is all still in development.
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So good 
. Thank you for sharing.
I am also hopeful that you'll learn a lot in the reef-pi build process.
Tank looks gorgeous
. Thank you for sharing.I am also hopeful that you'll learn a lot in the reef-pi build process.
Tank looks gorgeous
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pickupman66
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@benapilot this far I am running the two in tandem until we get the DC pump control working with the reef pi. then I plan to shut he archon down and possibly sell the power bars.
All that said, since I have had the reef pi up, the Archon has been stable and I have had zero issues with either one.
All that said, since I have had the reef pi up, the Archon has been stable and I have had zero issues with either one.
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pickupman66
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Forgot I had these fruit loops or whatever they are in the back of the tank. Just chilling looking good.
Gorgeous
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pickupman66
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New goodies!
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pickupman66
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Photos anyone? tank churns along. the anemones split. then they split again. then one more time. 2 became 6.
Anemonees from the underside. And a photobomb by the most demanding fish in the tank.
Why is this crab up here? he loves to climb this thing. Check the tips out on the bottom right branch and then look at the later photos. getting some really impressive growth here.
Buds. Sorta. they want food. Ill gladly take this shot because that Potters is so hard to photograph.
Big yellow fish again for the win! he is doing so well.
Check out these growth tips. only a few weeks old.
yea, that clam is stellar when set alongside these zoas.
Anemonees from the underside. And a photobomb by the most demanding fish in the tank.
Why is this crab up here? he loves to climb this thing. Check the tips out on the bottom right branch and then look at the later photos. getting some really impressive growth here.
Buds. Sorta. they want food. Ill gladly take this shot because that Potters is so hard to photograph.
Big yellow fish again for the win! he is doing so well.
Check out these growth tips. only a few weeks old.
yea, that clam is stellar when set alongside these zoas.
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pickupman66
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Clam update. Just under 3 months. Over 1/4" of new bright white shell growth. I think it's happy. It also turned 90° from it's original placement.
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pickupman66
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yea they are a pain. mine have wandered and are getting into one coral but I am doing what I can to control them with current.
DaveMorris
MACNA2016 Co-Chair
Tank is looking great!
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pickupman66
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Thanks Dave!
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pickupman66
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So, another thread had me looking through photos of my tank for one of my old butterflies. well. I came across this little gem. baby potters angel when we got him. Oh so cute!!!!
July 2014
Currently
OH yea and this funny one of the Copperband.
July 2014
Currently
OH yea and this funny one of the Copperband.
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