Gilroy 425g Build Thread (All Apex, all the time)
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- Thread starter Terence
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Actually, this is my current view - writing another updates-post to this thread right now!
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First off, I cannot remember if I posted on the thread or not, but a couple of months back I broke off the bulkhead on my RODI storage container. Soaked me actually. Well I started to repair it and just can't seem to get the bulkhead tight enough. I wanted the long brittle part to be inside the tank this time, which means the nut is in there. I need another set of hands to help me. I tightened it, but it still had a slow leak. Maybe @RussM will make a trip over and help me out if I bribe him with a good meal from Nancy! 
Next, I wanted to show you guys the way I mounted my PTZ camera downstairs. This camera cost me about $40 on amazon and has been great. I don't care at all about what resolution or frame rate it is, so don't even bother asking All I use this for is the ability to pan up and down the sump. With it mounted to the wall like this, the image is sideways in the phone, but it doesn't matter because I just hold the phone in portrait mode and it works great. I can see from one side of my sump to the other, as well as all the Apex equipment on the board that is at the end of the sump mounted perpendicularly. I can also see the water containers as well. It integrates into the Apex dashboard just fine, but you can only move the camera in their app.
So recently we had yet another power outage and brown out situation here. For some reason my Abyzz controller has not liked these events. This last time the entire thing went kaput. However, the pump has a 10-year warranty and the incredible service from Jeff at Abyzz America had a replacement controller in the mail right away. In the meantime, I had to put the Red Dragon 230 back on as my backup. It worked great. Really a good pump too. In these high-head-pressure situations though, there is no beating the Abyzz. Here is a pic of the controller and of the flow graph today after I reinstalled the Abyzz pump. Pretty cool graph of power to flow ratio of both pumps as I changed them over this morning.
I so hate my Deltec calcium reactor. Pacific Sun or DaStaCo, if you are listening, send me out one of your reactors and this thing goes to parts heap the same day I get it!
As you saw from a previous post, I got my ReBorn media from Julian and it was time to change it out this week. So I went down, cleaned out the Deltec reactor, and also cleaned out the secondary reactor with the sludge. OMG! Look at how much clay silt was collected from just one load of Deltec media since the last time I changed it a number of months before! Imagine if that was going into my sump! This amazes me that they can sell this product.
So I go ahead and refill the reactor as well as the secondary reactor with TLF ReBorn and also add a bag of ReMag mixed in with the media in the primary calcium reactor. I put the lid back on, lift it up, bump it somehow, and hear CRACK! S H I T! D A M M M I T! It seems that the recirculating pipes on this point of sale are made out of some paper thin plastic that easily cracks - especially since they are GLUED DOWN to their supports on the lid! So, now I had to scrounge and find a 20mm elbow in my plumbing crap and fashion some sort of hokey fix just to get the thing going again. . . only to find out the other pipe is cracked too - but not quite as bad. And with this second pipe, the way this thing is built, there is no way of getting it off and replacing it - everything is glued, even to the lid. So I got some glue, did my best to seal it, and fired it up. I have a drip every 30 seconds now, and it will have to do until it either goes altogether, or one of you out there give me some genius advice of how to seal it in place. ARGH! The good news is the reactor is running, and with the info from the Alk monitor I have in testing, fine tuning the pH level was a breeze. I kept my DOS pushing 180ml of water through it every three minutes. The label for the media says 6.5 but I started at 6.6. My dKH immediately started to rise so I kept notching it up (.08 pH) every 12 hours until it seemed to find equilibrium around 9.05 dKH on my tester. My dKH testing machine tests at 6hr intervals and the downward blips you see on the graph are just a software anomaly right now. But in this graph (that starts from the time when I changed the reactor) you can see how the dKH was rising at first, I changed the CR pH, it was still rising, and then I just kept raising it until I could see a relative flat line around 9 on the dKH. Toward the end, it looked like I dropped it a bit too much so I notched it up a tiny bit.
The last thing I will chat about right now is the value of a big sump and lots of room for rock and macro algae. About 10 months ago, I think, I received a starter of a couple of rocks as well as three or four types of macro algae from my good friend Robert at Neptune Aquatics in San Jose. It has done phenomenally in my sump lit under a standard Kessil A360 - even through the winter when there often was no light on it for days (covered with foam) or late just light from one little 12"x12" portal cut in the foam. Well today it is amazing to see how much life and goodness is going on in there. Pods, sponges, feather dusters, starfish, even star astreas are reproducing in there! It has finally got so big that today, for the first time, I had to do a big culling (I take a small bit here or there from time to time but this was different). I grabbed about two basketball size handfuls of algae from different parts of the algae blob. The pic below was taken AFTER I pulled out the algae. And realize too, that when it is on the floor, it looks about half the size as it was in the sump. Before I pulled them out, I swished and shook them vigorously in the sump so any of the little critters would have a chance to live before I took it out. I know its not possible for many of you to have a sump this big, but if you have room for a fish cave, do not go for the traditional sump approach. You have some much more real estate and versatility with an open approach like this! Plus it is just fun because it is like your own personal touch tank in another part of your home. Oh, and in the pic you can see my beautiful Powder Blue recovered nicely and loving life down there in his own domain - I do need to get him a friend though...
Well, that's it for now, take care and happy April Fool's Day!
Next, I wanted to show you guys the way I mounted my PTZ camera downstairs. This camera cost me about $40 on amazon and has been great. I don't care at all about what resolution or frame rate it is, so don't even bother asking
All I use this for is the ability to pan up and down the sump. With it mounted to the wall like this, the image is sideways in the phone, but it doesn't matter because I just hold the phone in portrait mode and it works great. I can see from one side of my sump to the other, as well as all the Apex equipment on the board that is at the end of the sump mounted perpendicularly. I can also see the water containers as well. It integrates into the Apex dashboard just fine, but you can only move the camera in their app. So recently we had yet another power outage and brown out situation here. For some reason my Abyzz controller has not liked these events. This last time the entire thing went kaput. However, the pump has a 10-year warranty and the incredible service from Jeff at Abyzz America had a replacement controller in the mail right away. In the meantime, I had to put the Red Dragon 230 back on as my backup. It worked great. Really a good pump too. In these high-head-pressure situations though, there is no beating the Abyzz. Here is a pic of the controller and of the flow graph today after I reinstalled the Abyzz pump. Pretty cool graph of power to flow ratio of both pumps as I changed them over this morning.
I so hate my Deltec calcium reactor. Pacific Sun or DaStaCo, if you are listening, send me out one of your reactors and this thing goes to parts heap the same day I get it!
As you saw from a previous post, I got my ReBorn media from Julian and it was time to change it out this week. So I went down, cleaned out the Deltec reactor, and also cleaned out the secondary reactor with the sludge. OMG! Look at how much clay silt was collected from just one load of Deltec media since the last time I changed it a number of months before! Imagine if that was going into my sump! This amazes me that they can sell this product.
So I go ahead and refill the reactor as well as the secondary reactor with TLF ReBorn and also add a bag of ReMag mixed in with the media in the primary calcium reactor. I put the lid back on, lift it up, bump it somehow, and hear CRACK! S H I T! D A M M M I T! It seems that the recirculating pipes on this point of sale are made out of some paper thin plastic that easily cracks - especially since they are GLUED DOWN to their supports on the lid! So, now I had to scrounge and find a 20mm elbow in my plumbing crap and fashion some sort of hokey fix just to get the thing going again. . . only to find out the other pipe is cracked too - but not quite as bad. And with this second pipe, the way this thing is built, there is no way of getting it off and replacing it - everything is glued, even to the lid. So I got some glue, did my best to seal it, and fired it up. I have a drip every 30 seconds now, and it will have to do until it either goes altogether, or one of you out there give me some genius advice of how to seal it in place. ARGH! The good news is the reactor is running, and with the info from the Alk monitor I have in testing, fine tuning the pH level was a breeze. I kept my DOS pushing 180ml of water through it every three minutes. The label for the media says 6.5 but I started at 6.6. My dKH immediately started to rise so I kept notching it up (.08 pH) every 12 hours until it seemed to find equilibrium around 9.05 dKH on my tester. My dKH testing machine tests at 6hr intervals and the downward blips you see on the graph are just a software anomaly right now. But in this graph (that starts from the time when I changed the reactor) you can see how the dKH was rising at first, I changed the CR pH, it was still rising, and then I just kept raising it until I could see a relative flat line around 9 on the dKH. Toward the end, it looked like I dropped it a bit too much so I notched it up a tiny bit.
The last thing I will chat about right now is the value of a big sump and lots of room for rock and macro algae. About 10 months ago, I think, I received a starter of a couple of rocks as well as three or four types of macro algae from my good friend Robert at Neptune Aquatics in San Jose. It has done phenomenally in my sump lit under a standard Kessil A360 - even through the winter when there often was no light on it for days (covered with foam) or late just light from one little 12"x12" portal cut in the foam. Well today it is amazing to see how much life and goodness is going on in there. Pods, sponges, feather dusters, starfish, even star astreas are reproducing in there! It has finally got so big that today, for the first time, I had to do a big culling (I take a small bit here or there from time to time but this was different). I grabbed about two basketball size handfuls of algae from different parts of the algae blob. The pic below was taken AFTER I pulled out the algae. And realize too, that when it is on the floor, it looks about half the size as it was in the sump. Before I pulled them out, I swished and shook them vigorously in the sump so any of the little critters would have a chance to live before I took it out. I know its not possible for many of you to have a sump this big, but if you have room for a fish cave, do not go for the traditional sump approach. You have some much more real estate and versatility with an open approach like this! Plus it is just fun because it is like your own personal touch tank in another part of your home. Oh, and in the pic you can see my beautiful Powder Blue recovered nicely and loving life down there in his own domain - I do need to get him a friend though...
Well, that's it for now, take care and happy April Fool's Day!
Fudsey
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@Terence have you thought of just putting a UPS on the Abyzz? Would that not solve the brown out and power outages?
OP
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Not from what I have been told. Most UPS just do a pass through. There is no isolation. To get that you need to have a much more expensive unit. What can be done (and I have thought about it seriously) is buying four 6v golf cart batteries, wire them in series/parallel, connect them to a sine-wave inverter connected to an ATS. I also thought about simply buying one of those all-in-one inverter/converter units they have for motor homes. There are a lot of those on the used market.
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Well a computer on a UPS will continue working without a hiccup if power wains or is lost. Just a thought but I am not sure of it used for this application.
Krazie4Acans
Active Member
I'm not sure what UPS you are looking at but almost every smart UPS I have worked with in the last 26 years conditions power as well as backs up power. So it attenuates spikes and low voltage brown outs and will switch to battery if the low voltage lasts for more time than it can capacitively buffer. A small 750Ah model can be picked up for a few hundred bucks.
Agree, most cheap UPS provide some level of power conditioning but not great. Mostly surge suppression vs. power regulation. You could consider running your wall power into this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000...tDescription_secondary_view_div_1491094462008
and then the output of that into a cheap UPS to protect your pump, Apex brain, any other sensitive electronics.
You could also use the UPS, a relay on the input to the UPS, and the Apex to turn power back on a couple seconds after power is restored, it's those first couple of seconds that are the nastiest. I'd guess that it's the On/Off transients damaging things, but I don't know how long or how low the brownouts get.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000...tDescription_secondary_view_div_1491094462008
and then the output of that into a cheap UPS to protect your pump, Apex brain, any other sensitive electronics.
You could also use the UPS, a relay on the input to the UPS, and the Apex to turn power back on a couple seconds after power is restored, it's those first couple of seconds that are the nastiest. I'd guess that it's the On/Off transients damaging things, but I don't know how long or how low the brownouts get.
OP
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I will have to take a closer look at that product. Sounds promising.
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Nice update!
Krazie4Acans
Active Member
First off, I cannot remember if I posted on the thread or not, but a couple of months back I broke off the bulkhead on my RODI storage container. Soaked me actually. Well I started to repair it and just can't seem to get the bulkhead tight enough. I wanted the long brittle part to be inside the tank this time, which means the nut is in there. I need another set of hands to help me. I tightened it, but it still had a slow leak. Maybe @RussM will make a trip over and help me out if I bribe him with a good meal from Nancy!
I can't believe no one mentioned the rabbit ears in the picture. Was I the only one that noticed them?
Nice update @Terence. I still can't believe that sludge. I really need an alk monitor on my tank!
OP
OP
These are some of the best fish photos I have taken yet. He has been carrying the brood for about three weeks now - it is almost time!
SchnitzelReef
Valuable Member
Terrence throw that Deltec in the trash and buy a Geo. I've owned 3 different reactors, and I've seen 10 different reactors in person...the Geo is the simplest and easiest I've yet to see. Mine has been running like a clock for 2+ years. (I did swap the noisy Panworld pump for a sicce). The design is simple and works great. No Co2 gets trapped like other reactors, and I man handle mine all the time and have yet to break it.
They aren't as fancy as the Dastaco or their brands, but imo the simpler the better.
They aren't as fancy as the Dastaco or their brands, but imo the simpler the better.
OP
OP
I hear you. The Deltec has really disappointed me for sure. I cannot believe how chintzy those upper pipes were.
It is running like a champ now that I have TLF ReBorn in it and no AquaBee "German" pump on it.
I will get this one little leak sealed up somehow and then use it until it falls apart or until I get a DaStaCo or a Pacific Sun. I really like the no-ph-probe approach. I could probably even build one myself and drive it with the FMM (optical sensor) and the DOS if I wanted to.
It is running like a champ now that I have TLF ReBorn in it and no AquaBee "German" pump on it.
I will get this one little leak sealed up somehow and then use it until it falls apart or until I get a DaStaCo or a Pacific Sun. I really like the no-ph-probe approach. I could probably even build one myself and drive it with the FMM (optical sensor) and the DOS if I wanted to.
SchnitzelReef
Valuable Member
Talk to dastaco or pacific sun about getting their equipment to communicate with the apex, and maybe you can get a free one. Hahaha
IronVulture
Valuable Member
You want a simple calcium reactor Lifereef is the answer. Same design for almost 20 years, you can use it with any pump, and nearly everything can be repaired in a pinch with parts available at any local hardware store.
I am looking at these two options and I like the apex idea here! Make it happen!
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