300G "Re-Build" - Phoenix rising from the ashes---I hope!!!

[BostonReefer300]

And from today:
I finally finished setting up the reactor chamber in the new sump! The delay was caused by weird out-of-stock plumbing fittings at BRS. Anyway, here are a couple pictures. In the back, you can see the manifold I built myself (thank you very much!). A Sicce Synchra 2.0 feeds it. The reactor on the left currently has carbon. The one on the right has a couple handfuls of biopellets tumbling. (Again, thanks to Geo's Reef for making the reactors to match my color scheme!). The effluent from the biopellets reactor goes through a hose to be deposited back in the skimmer chamber near the skimmer intake. I think I'm finally done with my upgraded sump setup! Time to find another expensive project to annoy my wife.
PS don't pay attention to the crimped effluent hose on the biopellet reactor. I fixed that.

 

[BostonReefer300]

Question on your flow meter. Did you do any kind of control test to ensure its accuracy? I'm sure its not extremely accurate and that may not matter to you. I have Keyence clamp on meters and Endress Hauser magnetic inductive pass through flow meters I use all the time at work. Both are industrial grade and still have some variables that needs to be accounted for when parametrizing.

Even with multiple 90s in your run we can use some quick math to determine accurate flow readings. The easy part is its constant flow and the plumbing is set without change. The tricky part is the liquid being measured needs to remain as close to the same as possible. Specific gravity, Conductivity, and Dielectric constant, are some variables to account for. For example conductivity is also used in other applications to measure salinity, therefore any variation in salinity (evaporation or ATO inaccuracy) will affect the conductivity. This could cause the flowmeter to read either higher or lower depending on the deviation.

Easiest method is just use a continues level system if pumping into or out of a storage tank. Level gained/loss by the volume of a tank over the pumping timeframe is an easy calculation to determine GPH. In an industrial setting where flow usage is in a recirculation loop or used as process variable (critical to operational success) we set the flow meter parameters to what the basic readings for SG, Conductivity, DC, Etc... are expected to be. We also have instruments to monitor the water for the same readings. Any deviations in the water parameters are ran through a scaling algorithm that corresponds with what we set the flowmeter at originally. This essentially eliminates the changes in water parameters from negatively affecting the flow calculation. We then log the flow with date and time stamp.


Obviously this isn't an option for an aquarium without some work but really wouldn't be that hard to do using a raspberry PI. Is it necessary to know real time accurate flow? Probably not for the amount of work. But if it ever becomes a focal point in the hobby I could see a controller company like apex doing it. They already have the monitoring so it would just be a flow meter and a bit of code.

Sorry I missed this post from a few months ago. I tested the flow meter by collecting the output from my UV in a 5 gallon bucket while timing it. I did it several times and averaged the results. Turns out that the Apex was reporting 225 gph and my manual test came in at 221. That's close enough for my purposes and that's roughly the target flow I want through the UV