Home Office 40B AIO "Letterkenny" Build

[PlumbTuckered]

My compliments; that is a really nice build!

 

[ScubaSnacks]

My compliments; that is a really nice build!

Thanks!

 

[ScubaSnacks]

If you were wondering what all that above meant, here's the finished product. I'm really pleased with the result.

 

[BBarry]

looks amazing but you better get your dosing pumps setup stat. you have literally 3 - 4 times as many corals as I do right now and they are sucking up your nutrients.

Maybe you should do like I'm doing and pull a bunch of the small frags out and put them in another tank and let them grow. I think you need time more than anything right now, so you can see where to put stuff.

 

[BBarry]

Here's the system I'm setting up. I paid about 225 for everything (including supplements)I grabbed prices off Amazon because I couldn't find my receipts from my LFS.

Jebao DP-3 Dosing Pump (70 bucks)
Marinecolor Acrylic 3 chamber reservoir (55 bucks)
Aquarium Choice Dosing tubing (15 bucks)

I'm going to be dosing the following 3 supplements.
All For Reef
Brightwell Aquatics NeoNitro
Brightwell Aquatics NeoPhos

 

[ScubaSnacks]

looks amazing but you better get your dosing pumps setup stat. you have literally 3 - 4 times as many corals as I do right now and they are sucking up your nutrients.

Maybe you should do like I'm doing and pull a bunch of the small frags out and put them in another tank and let them grow. I think you need time more than anything right now, so you can see where to put stuff.

I have a 4 channel doser set up with All For Reef, NeoPhos, and NeoNitro. I've been checking nutrients pretty religiously since I let them bottom out a few months ago. I'm sitting at 10 ppm Nitrate and .08 ppm Phosphate at the moment without dosing N or P. This is an increase from where it was sitting for about a month at 5 ppm Nitrate and .01 ppm Phosphate which I attribute to changing food from Hikari frozen brine and mysis to LRS Reef Frenzy Nano which everyone in the tank seems to love, adding the two PJs, and killing off the cyano.

I'm basically done stocking LPS at the moment. If I can convince the tailspot to move to the barnacles, I won't have to move/replace the Duncans. Everything will be in grow out mode for the foreseeable future. Lighting upgrades for SPS is next on the list which will take me a few months to get together. After that, I will start slowly collecting SPS for the top of the reef.

 

[BBarry]

I have a 4 channel doser set up with All For Reef, NeoPhos, and NeoNitro. I've been checking nutrients pretty religiously since I let them bottom out a few months ago. I'm sitting at 10 ppm Nitrate and .08 ppm Phosphate at the moment without dosing N or P. This is an increase from where it was sitting for about a month at 5 ppm Nitrate and .01 ppm Phosphate which I attribute to changing food from Hikari frozen brine and mysis to LRS Reef Frenzy Nano which everyone in the tank seems to love, adding the two PJs, and killing off the cyano.

I'm basically done stocking LPS at the moment. If I can convince the tailspot to move to the barnacles, I won't have to move/replace the Duncans. Everything will be in grow out mode for the foreseeable future. Lighting upgrades for SPS is next on the list which will take me a few months to get together. After that, I will start slowly collecting SPS for the top of the reef.

Oh ok. As usual I'm behind LOL.

I'm actually redoing my fishroom / office and need to figure out the layout. That and I'm trying to scale back on tanks ( 2 75's, 1 55, 2 40's, 1 29 <-- all freshwater) 20 long 40 breeder and 15 cube (all saltwater). 3 snake tanks (4 feet each).

 

[ScubaSnacks]

Oh ok. As usual I'm behind LOL.

I'm actually redoing my fishroom / office and need to figure out the layout. That and I'm trying to scale back on tanks ( 2 75's, 1 55, 2 40's, 1 29 <-- all freshwater) 20 long 40 breeder and 15 cube (all saltwater). 3 snake tanks (4 feet each).

lol - if you want to know how your 40 will look in 6 weeks, just check in here .

 

[BBarry]

lol - if you want to know how your 40 will look in 6 weeks, just check in here .

LOL. I snagged one of those Adaptive Reef Controller boards while it was on sale. Looking forward to prettying up the setup once I get everything in permanent locations.

 

[ScubaSnacks]

LOL. I snagged one of those Adaptive Reef Controller boards while it was on sale. Looking forward to prettying up the setup once I get everything in permanent locations.

I have a bunch of projects planned for this tank including a controller (probably diy), my own IoT auto feeder, auto water changes, vacation lid (auto-drain) for the skimmer, power backup, etc. I'll be busy for a while.

 

[ScubaSnacks]

I decided against Duncan island and moved 5 of the frags around the tank. Two went on the barnacle island, one moved to the bottom of the left front rock, and two to the back of the back left rock. I mounted those last two so you can see them looking under the left arch.

I moved one of the hammers down to the top of the left bottom rock. Two more moves to go, but I ran out of coral gum. I'll finish the job next week. Last update for the week, I replaced the plexiglass water line adjuster with a 3D printed one. If you look closely you can see my name on it.

 

[ScubaSnacks]

Way back in post 34 I commented about how the filter cup hole in the Tenecor AIO was slightly too large for the off the shelf ReefDiaper. I spent a bit of time "reverse engineering" it so that I could 3D print my own and stop having to use an adaptor ring to fill the gap. Well, today I got a prototype to fit and work exactly as intended.

One advantage, I printed at 100% fill which made it more dense than the water and finally the sock stays put without having to throw a rock in to weigh it down. Small victories lol.

 

[ScubaSnacks]

I've decided to start slowly on my controller design. I am probably going to end up going reef-pi with some customizations. Last year I decided to build an electric brewery and there was a software called craftbeer-pi that I was able to do the same to make it work like I wanted to.

First usecase that I want to develop for short term is my ATO. It works exactly how it is supposed to, but when the reef diaper gets full, the water level in the return chamber drops and very quickly causes the salinity to drop. I want to put an optical level sensor in my first chamber so that it alerts me and automatically turns off my ATO.

What that means is I need an optical level sensor, a microcontroller with wifi, and a smart plug to at least have some protection while I build a full reef-pi setup. Cheap optical sensors are easy to come by, but they are usually through mounted which won't work for me so overnight I printed these up.

So now I have magnetic housings for 6 optical sensors which I can use for ATO, ATO reservoir, or anything I need to track level really. I have one sensor already which you can see assembled. I plan on filling with silicone before closing them up. Microcontroller will be showing up next week, then to code it, case it, and test!

 

[Lebowski_]

If you were wondering what all that above meant, here's the finished product. I'm really pleased with the result.

You should be - it looks fantastic.

 

[ScubaSnacks]

So the controller is going a little faster than I planned. Originally I was going to make peripherals and then build the main controller, but I was reading the Reef Pi 6.0 documentation and the latest updates that allow for ESP32 devices led me to start building the Pi. The price of Raspberry Pi's right now is out of control due to the chip shortage, so I risked a knock-off called Le Potato. Setup wasn't as straight forward as an OEM Pi. You have to load with a Libre build.

The installation for Reef-Pi was also a bit of a pain. Ultimately I was able to get an older version running following Thread 'How to install reef-pi' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-to-install-reef-pi.889815/

After a couple of hours in OnShape and a lot more hours on the 3D printer, I've finished the first part of my Reef Controller!

Next it is time for the peripherals. The first one I'm making is an outlet controller. Parts are in, but I have a lot of soldering, modeling, and printing to do.

Coral and tank updates to come this weekend.

 

[ScubaSnacks]

As promised, tank and coral update.

Things continue to do well. I picked up 3 corals to finish up the LPS stocking (cynaria, orange spawn, gold torch) and my first NPS as a tester (fat head dendro). I am thinking about a reef chili and two more dendros for the dark areas. I had to move the peachy spawn to the right side, it wasn't a huge fan of the flow on the left but seems to be happier now.

I fed the cynaria and took this picture last night. I guess it likes the LPS pellets.

I've continued work on the controller. I finished modeling the power outlet and did a test print to fit checking everything.

The final part is on the printer now. I'm not looking forward to soldering two of these things. That's it for now!

 

[ScubaSnacks]

Ok, that's enough soldering for one day. Tomorrow I'll wire the line side to the relay board, power from the AC/DC to the ESP32 and relay board, and then the signal wire ribbon cable from the ESP32 to the relay board... And then I have to do it again. This is my least favorite part... too OCD.

 

[ScubaSnacks]

A couple of hours this morning later and voila.

Each outlet is independently controlled on the reef pi ui. The bottom cover is printing now. One down, one to go.

Welcome our newest fish Dan.

Hopefully the leather gets used to him.

 

[tharbin]

Very clean and impressive ReefPi, just like the rest of your tank setup. I like how clean you are keeping it.

I've considered building a ReefPi a few times but the only Pi I have available right now is a really old Pi B+, way too underpowered for today. I thought about the clones but I'm not sure I would follow through and actually build it well enough to make it worth the effort. I guess I should read up on the ESP32, might be a game changer.

Have you started working on the monitor parts yet? I see a graph on the display but I can't make out what it is measuring. I assume it's temp but...

 

[ScubaSnacks]

Very clean and impressive ReefPi, just like the rest of your tank setup. I like how clean you are keeping it.

I've considered building a ReefPi a few times but the only Pi I have available right now is a really old Pi B+, way too underpowered for today. I thought about the clones but I'm not sure I would follow through and actually build it well enough to make it worth the effort. I guess I should read up on the ESP32, might be a game changer.

Have you started working on the monitor parts yet? I see a graph on the display but I can't make out what it is measuring. I assume it's temp but...

Thank you. I'm trying my hardest to keep everything clean. Glad the effort shows! I had to redo the ribbon cable today - the dupont connectors were making very intermittent connection to both the relay board and the esp. I switched to JST (I think) and it's working a million times better. Here it is on box 2. I think it looks even cleaner, but still have about 30 more wires to add. Once I get it assembled, I'll make a post with my BOM, basic schematics, and 3D models if you decide to make your own.

I haven't started working on the sensors yet, waiting on sensors and stuff from AliExpress. Those will be connected to their own esp32 in the next few weeks. I might be designing a PCB for that. We'll see.