Buddy's Cade Reef From Downunder

[Wrangy]

I'll give that a proper update tomorrow.. Spoiler alert... It all went pretty well

Something I have been wanting to try for a long time is a chaeto reactor so of course I decided to try and DIY one with my old TLF phosban reactor.
I read a lot about them here on R2R and it seems that the TLF reactors are quite thin and can't cope with the LEDs wrapped directly on them, so my solution was to get a 4" diameter PVC pipe and wrap the LEDs around on the inside.
The idea is to give a small gap between the reactor and the LEDs so less heat can transfer. I thought it wouldn't hurt to add a fan to aid keeping the reactor wall cool.

I made the reactor the same height as my sump just to make it easier to plumb in the reactor. The LEDs only go down the pipe as far as the reactor sits in it.

I got an end cap to suit the pipe so I could place the fan (stolen from an old laptop cooling pad) inside it and blow air straight up and out of the reactor.
Firstly I glued some stand offs to the fan so it could draw air through the holes that I drilled in the side of the end cap. The other end of the stand offs are glued down to the end cap and the wires fed out the bottom.
Should keep it pretty cool! I will do some temperature readings with and without the fan later once I wire in the fan.

Absolute genius man!!! Can't wait to see how it goes too!

 

[buddy.]

Here is the chaeto right after I put it in the reactor and then today. So the algae has had 3 full night's under the lights and about doubled in size.
I am getting some brown film algae inside the reactor but I think I can put that down to a cycling tank.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Looks like early success to me.

 

[buddy.]

The chaeto reactor is still going great! I can just empty the reactor once per week at the moment which works out perfectly. The tank isn't stocked yet as I think the cycle has just finished so the chaeto growth may increase later on.

I was running a spare tunze return pump for the reactor but it was so loud for such a small pump... It was easily the loudest thing on my entire aquarium! I swapped it out for a tiny jebao pump today and now it's dead silent and has plenty of flow.

 

[buddy.]

Hey everyone it's been a while since I've updated!
The tank is still cruising along nicely. There still hasn't been any new additions though. I don't think my anemone recovered from the move a while back but it is surprisingly still hanging in there.

Parameters are pretty stable with phos 0.05 and nitrate 0 but I am getting a little hair algae lately.

Here is a new pic for you guys!

 

[NY_Caveman]

Hey everyone it's been a while since I've updated!
The tank is still cruising along nicely. There still hasn't been any new additions though. I don't think my anemone recovered from the move a while back but it is surprisingly still hanging in there.

Parameters are pretty stable with phos 0.05 and nitrate 0 but I am getting a little hair algae lately.

Here is a new pic for you guys!

Looks great @buddy. Nice to hear from you!

 

[Wrangy]

You need to come out of hiding more often!! Tank is looking fantastic man!!

 

[buddy.]

Looks great @buddy. Nice to hear from you!

You need to come out of hiding more often!! Tank is looking fantastic man!!

Thanks guys!

 

[buddy.]

So I finally got around to setting up my dosing pump. The tank was going alright on just water changes but now the tank is using more than the water changes can keep up with.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Do you clean that thing everyday? LOL!

 

[Wrangy]

Do you clean that thing everyday? LOL!

I agree! haha so clean and that cabinet!!

 

[buddy.]

Hahah I love how clean it stays! See how dark the filter socks are? That is a lot of gunk that is not settling in the sump. It also helps that the sump is in darkness 99% of the time so algae has a hard time growing down there.

 

[buddy.]

I am off on holiday to the States in a couple of weeks from now so I have been preparing the tank to be left for 3 weeks unattended.
The closest person I know that knows my tank lives about 4 hours drive away so I am hoping there is no emergencies!!
I will give a run down of what I have done but if I have missed anything let me know

I have been honing in the dosing pump and that should be pretty good by next week.
My Eheim heater wasn't quite keeping it up so I swapped it out for a 300w Schego and my temp is much more stable.
My tank uses about 20 litres a week on the ATO so I bought an 80 litre tub and sat in on the floor next to the sump. Should be ample for the time I am away.
I changed over the fans in the hood from 40mm to 80mm. There was a little mold starting to grow on the hood but it has gone since the extra airflow. Best thing is that these fans are nice and quiet!
I bought a Foscam R2 so I can check in on the tank anytime. This is a great little camera! I will write a post about it when I get some more pics.

My reef-pi will let me monitor the tank and also control all of the equipment on the tank while I am away. So if anything does happen to go wrong a can at least take some action.

Anyways that is enough talking... here is a couple of pics of the tank from today!

 

[buddy.]

Here is what my algae reactor looks like before a clean these days. Full of slimy green goodness!

 

[buddy.]

Set up a battery backup for my return pump. I'll make it more permanent later on.

It's a deep cycle battery - low voltage module - 12v to 24v booster - relay.

So it will run off the normal power supply and when the power goes out the relay swaps over to battery power.
I have a smart charger plugged in to the battery keeping it charged.

 

[buddy.]

Well I was away from the tank for about 3 weeks while I was on holiday... it looks like my perperations paid off since there were no major problems!
I was able to monitor and control my tank with my reef-pi controller and Foscam camera. It was really nice being able to check in on the tank whenever I wanted.
I have a little more algae than when I left which is probably from my auto feeder. I also randomly had a plate coral die but that is about all i could complain about. Overall I am very happy with how the tank could look after it self for that long!

 

[Wrangy]

Welcome back to Aus haha so glad to hear the worst part is a little more algae

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Glad you came back to a healthy tank. That's always the anxiety with traveling.

 

[buddy.]

I finally decided to set up my DIY automatic water changer that I stopped using a couple of years ago due to moving houses.
It still isn't permanently set up as I'll have to move once more but it will do the job for now.

It's basically an Arduino Nano with a timer and two relays. I'm using two Spectrapure pumps which are high quality.
I've set it to change 5L per day which works out to be about a 15% weekly change. It puts new water in and takes old water out every 10 minutes. I'll probably lower the amount of water once I get the hair algae under control.

 

[buddy.]

My RO/DI output has been getting super slow lately so I decided to do a full change over of the cartridges.
I was still getting 0 TDS but I haven't had a filter change in 3 years or so. My tap water has a pretty low TDS to start with.
The Di resin was about 3/4 used up too.

My output is SO much quicker now. Only took an hour to fill my RO/DI reservior instead of over 2 hours!

Di cartridge... yes I removed the sticker haha

RO Membrane. I suspect this was clogged up and slowing the flow.

The other two cartridges looked fairly brown too!

In TDS

Out TDS