jcolliii's IM25 Lagoon journey - MASTERTRONIC up and running!

[jcolliii]

That's my one complaint, I really wish it had an access port in the top.

Just bought an 80lb 'Vittles Vault' for my NSW. Big wide mouth with gasket seal and it'll hold 20 gallons. We use them for our dog food and they are *robust*. A bit over 80 bucks shipped from ebay. Only thing that could be better was if it were translucent. Ah well, can't have everything, I suppose. It will have a float switch to kill the entire system at low water level.

EDIT: Just got a box of 4 individual wifi outlets as well by the same company as my reef control outlets. Now, it's just the water level controller and plumbing stuff.

 

[jcolliii]

Baby Torch Update 1-7-22

The little guy is doing well. May break out the dremel tomorrow and get him off that huge rock piece. I remain convinced that this coral was the result of a spawning event of the torches in the tank. I suspect this because this baby has markedly different coloration than the other cristata - which has a brown-purple base and orange tentacle tips.

Hard to get the color of this one accurately. The tips are much more orangey than this in person. Note the overall tissue color - brown-purple.

Here is the bambino.

In a different spot, so exposure was different, but the tips are still very orangey, but the area around the mouth is green. My other torch is a dragon soul type - and I am not even sure cristatas and glabrescens can hybridize or not. But, here's the interesting thing... does anyone see external septae on the exposed oral disk tissue above? Cristatas have external septae protruding from the tissue, glabrescens don't. Dunno if larval cristatas have that characteristic, or if it might develop as they mature, but I have been trying to see if I see those septae - and thus far I have not been able to observe them. We'll see as it ages.

 

[jcolliii]

Broke out the dremel this morning and was able to successfully remove the small chunk of the rock that the baby torch is on from the larger piece of branch rock and glue it on to a plug. I can definitively now say that it is a cristata. Once it was fully retracted, the exsert septae were clearly visible. So that is one mystery down. The next is how a single cristata was able to spawn and produce viable offspring? Weird.

My yellow frogspawn constantly drops tentacles - I see them wedged into cracks between my acetal tiles and the front glass, but these just wither and go away, reduced to nothing by bacterial respiration. I have never seen the cristata tentacles drop off. I have seen the dragon soul torch do this on occasion when I get perhaps a bit too enthusiastic with a turkey baster and use it as a turkey blaster. I wonder if it was a dropped tentacle that 'took'? Can a bit of tentacle develop into an entire new clone? The questions accumulate.

 

[jcolliii]

One More IM NuvoSkim Attempted Modification...

If you've been following along, you know that I modified my IM NuvoSkim because the pumps that they include are absolute chinese garbage that are good for (usually) less than a year each. And, they have been very difficult to get as replacement parts from IM. So I guess about 8 months ago or so, I ordered a Sicce Nano and a needle wheel impeller for it and modified my IM skimmer. You can see what I did in that post here.

It has produced foam, and it has skimmed. But the skimmate has really been not all that great - not Earl Gray, for sure - more like pallid green tea. I *REALLY* like the form factor of this skimmer though - you can barely tell there is a skimmer there - it is so unobtrusive. So, poking around looking at all of the other nano skimmers around, I noticed that a lot of them had the pump on the bottom outside of the skimmer body. Hmm... one of the problems I have had with the Nano pump is that the output tube does not line up exactly with the input hole into the skimmer chamber. As a result, some of the bubbles accumulate under the skimmer chamber and accumulate into large bubbles that I can hear occasionally 'blurp' up into the chamber in a rather noisy, distracting way. More importantly, not all of the microbubbles are being effectively utilized to remove scum in the chamber. So, to better utilize the pump, and to make it easier to mate the pump output to the skimmer input, surgery was required.

So, measured the body, and cut the bottom off just below the lower chamber plate, then sanded the rough edge off. That gave me this...

You can see the lower part that was cut away in the upper right. I then used a piece of tubing that I had laying around that is a very tight fit to both the pump output and skimmer chamber inputs. The hope here is that:

1) the less restricted area around the pump will allow better 'sampling' of the overall water by the pump;

2) the bubble accumulation under the lower plate will be eliminated;

3) more bubbles inside the skimmer chamber will increase skimmer efficiency;

4) less noise transmitted through the skimmer body to the tank.

So far so good. It's been back in the tank for an hour or so and I have not heard a single 'blurp' sound from big bubble boluses burping from the bottom! It's starting to build a head and there appears to be more bubbles at the top than prior to this second modification. There does seem to be less noise than previously. I can still hear the pump, but less so. Maybe I will silicone some sort of rubber to the bottom down the road to isolate the base a bit more.

Will update in a day or two as skimate production continues.

 

[jazzfisher]

Does that make it too short? Is the pump still on the bottom? Not mechanical minded......... will follow- if it works I'll send you mine to modify!!!!

 

[TheWB]

One More IM NuvoSkim Attempted Modification...

If you've been following along, you know that I modified my IM NuvoSkim because the pumps that they include are absolute chinese garbage that are good for (usually) less than a year each. And, they have been very difficult to get as replacement parts from IM. So I guess about 8 months ago or so, I ordered a Sicce Nano and a needle wheel impeller for it and modified my IM skimmer. You can see what I did in that post here.

It has produced foam, and it has skimmed. But the skimmate has really been not all that great - not Earl Gray, for sure - more like pallid green tea. I *REALLY* like the form factor of this skimmer though - you can barely tell there is a skimmer there - it is so unobtrusive. So, poking around looking at all of the other nano skimmers around, I noticed that a lot of them had the pump on the bottom outside of the skimmer body. Hmm... one of the problems I have had with the Nano pump is that the output tube does not line up exactly with the input hole into the skimmer chamber. As a result, some of the bubbles accumulate under the skimmer chamber and accumulate into large bubbles that I can hear occasionally 'blurp' up into the chamber in a rather noisy, distracting way. More importantly, not all of the microbubbles are being effectively utilized to remove scum in the chamber. So, to better utilize the pump, and to make it easier to mate the pump output to the skimmer input, surgery was required.

So, measured the body, and cut the bottom off just below the lower chamber plate, then sanded the rough edge off. That gave me this...

You can see the lower part that was cut away in the upper right. I then used a piece of tubing that I had laying around that is a very tight fit to both the pump output and skimmer chamber inputs. The hope here is that:

1) the less restricted area around the pump will allow better 'sampling' of the overall water by the pump;

2) the bubble accumulation under the lower plate will be eliminated;

3) more bubbles inside the skimmer chamber will increase skimmer efficiency;

4) less noise transmitted through the skimmer body to the tank.

So far so good. It's been back in the tank for an hour or so and I have not heard a single 'blurp' sound from big bubble boluses burping from the bottom! It's starting to build a head and there appears to be more bubbles at the top than prior to this second modification. There does seem to be less noise than previously. I can still hear the pump, but less so. Maybe I will silicone some sort of rubber to the bottom down the road to isolate the base a bit more.

Will update in a day or two as skimate production continues.

I hope IM is paying attention because the only good thing about their skimmers is the low profile. That design was always stupid with the pump encased in plastic walls because it became impossible to clean. If you removed the pump there was no way to reconnect the airline when putting it back together. Replacing the pump and cutting off the enclosure was genius of you. Nothing to lose if you want to keep that form factor. I’m super happy with the PLS50 II on my tank but it’s the opposite of low profile.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

One More IM NuvoSkim Attempted Modification...

If you've been following along, you know that I modified my IM NuvoSkim because the pumps that they include are absolute chinese garbage that are good for (usually) less than a year each. And, they have been very difficult to get as replacement parts from IM. So I guess about 8 months ago or so, I ordered a Sicce Nano and a needle wheel impeller for it and modified my IM skimmer. You can see what I did in that post here.

It has produced foam, and it has skimmed. But the skimmate has really been not all that great - not Earl Gray, for sure - more like pallid green tea. I *REALLY* like the form factor of this skimmer though - you can barely tell there is a skimmer there - it is so unobtrusive. So, poking around looking at all of the other nano skimmers around, I noticed that a lot of them had the pump on the bottom outside of the skimmer body. Hmm... one of the problems I have had with the Nano pump is that the output tube does not line up exactly with the input hole into the skimmer chamber. As a result, some of the bubbles accumulate under the skimmer chamber and accumulate into large bubbles that I can hear occasionally 'blurp' up into the chamber in a rather noisy, distracting way. More importantly, not all of the microbubbles are being effectively utilized to remove scum in the chamber. So, to better utilize the pump, and to make it easier to mate the pump output to the skimmer input, surgery was required.

So, measured the body, and cut the bottom off just below the lower chamber plate, then sanded the rough edge off. That gave me this...

You can see the lower part that was cut away in the upper right. I then used a piece of tubing that I had laying around that is a very tight fit to both the pump output and skimmer chamber inputs. The hope here is that:

1) the less restricted area around the pump will allow better 'sampling' of the overall water by the pump;

2) the bubble accumulation under the lower plate will be eliminated;

3) more bubbles inside the skimmer chamber will increase skimmer efficiency;

4) less noise transmitted through the skimmer body to the tank.

So far so good. It's been back in the tank for an hour or so and I have not heard a single 'blurp' sound from big bubble boluses burping from the bottom! It's starting to build a head and there appears to be more bubbles at the top than prior to this second modification. There does seem to be less noise than previously. I can still hear the pump, but less so. Maybe I will silicone some sort of rubber to the bottom down the road to isolate the base a bit more.

Will update in a day or two as skimate production continues.

Another advantage I see here is that it opens up the range of pumps you can use. Trying to find a pump that fits into that little black box is pretty much impossible (as your previous re-engineering of the skimmer body showed). My IM pump died back in July. IM said they'd contact me when they had pumps back in stock. Surprise, still no pumps! I finally replaced the IM skimmer with the CADLights PLS-50 but I'll tell you, I sure stared at that little black box for hours trying to figure out how to make it work with a different pump. The CADLights works great but it sure is ugly in comparison! lol

Now if someone can figure out how to upgrade the CADLights skimmer to something like a CoralBox DCA1200 (and make it fit in chamber 2 of the 50 Lagoon) I'll be your friend forever!

 

[jcolliii]

Does that make it too short? Is the pump still on the bottom? Not mechanical minded......... will follow- if it works I'll send you mine to modify!!!!

Nope - it is just about the same height... right now it may be just a smidge taller, so I may need to cut the little piece of tubing another 1/4 or 3/8 of an inch shorter. The pump is on the bottom, and even without suction cups on the pump right now, it is quieter than it was with the pump stuffed inside the box (rattling). Will see how it does first. Can always just raise or lower the cup a bit to make up for it. It's building a pretty decent head right now though.

 

[jcolliii]

Another advantage I see here is that it opens up the range of pumps you can use. Trying to find a pump that fits into that little black box is pretty much impossible (as your previous re-engineering of the skimmer body showed). My IM pump died back in July. IM said they'd contact me when they had pumps back in stock. Surprise, still no pumps! I finally replaced the IM skimmer with the CADLights PLS-50 but I'll tell you, I sure stared at that little black box for hours trying to figure out how to make it work with a different pump. The CADLights works great but it sure is ugly in comparison! lol

Now if someone can figure out how to upgrade the CADLights skimmer to something like a CoralBox DCA1200 (and make it fit in chamber 2 of the 50 Lagoon) I'll be your friend forever!

WOW - still no pumps? IM should be ashamed of that kind of customer support. At this point, with this many failures - they should find another manufacturer, and give everyone who has ever ordered one of these skimmers a pump for free. No excuse at this point.

That's a nice looking small pump. Is that made by Jebao?

 

[jcolliii]

I hope IM is paying attention because the only good thing about their skimmers is the low profile. That design was always stupid with the pump encased in plastic walls because it became impossible to clean. If you removed the pump there was no way to reconnect the airline when putting it back together. Replacing the pump and cutting off the enclosure was genius of you. Nothing to lose if you want to keep that form factor. I’m super happy with the PLS50 II on my tank but it’s the opposite of low profile.

I dunno if they'll redesign their skimmer, but it would be great if @Innovative Marine would acknowledge the insane number of pump failures and get some replacements out to folks with NuvoSkim paperweights. I agree, though. That lower box is just plain stupid.

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

WOW - still no pumps? IM should be ashamed of that kind of customer support. At this point, with this many failures - they should find another manufacturer, and give everyone who has ever ordered one of these skimmers a pump for free. No excuse at this point.

That's a nice looking small pump. Is that made by Jebao?

The IM skimmer pump is a massive failure. I'm surprised they haven't moved on by now. I'm equally surprised that they haven't reached out to people who had pumps die to at least say "we're working on it, sorry about the delay".

The CoralBox pump is the same as the Jebao. DC, Apex compatible, and it's controllable. Just a hair too big to fit with the venturi intake in place.

 

[jcolliii]

Broken in after cleaning and skimming. This since just yesterday. Still on the light side - may have to raise the cup up a bit. We'll see how it progresses.

More of a green tea than Earl Gray...

 

[jcolliii]

BIG heads up for anyone looking for dwarf angel-like damsels - NY Aquatic has Madagascar damsels in stock. If I didn't have a starkii, I would be buying this fish right now! Gorgeous, super rare damsel, not a bad price either.

Special Madagascar Damsel|CHRYSIPTERA SP.

Chrysiptera Talboti talbot's damsel

www.nyaquatic.com

 

[Calm Blue Ocean]

BIG heads up for anyone looking for dwarf angel-like damsels - NY Aquatic has Madagascar damsels in stock. If I didn't have a starkii, I would be buying this fish right now! Gorgeous, super rare damsel, not a bad price either.

Special Madagascar Damsel|CHRYSIPTERA SP.

Chrysiptera Talboti talbot's damsel

www.nyaquatic.com

Beautiful fish. Makes me think of a Genicanthus angel which will be the first fish I buy if I ever move up to a bigger tank.

 

[TheWB]

Beautiful fish. Makes me think of a Genicanthus angel which will be the first fish I buy if I ever move up to a bigger tank.

I love this fish almost as much as the Starkii. You’re right about the Genicanthus similarity, I totally see that. When I eventually upgrade after we move in the next 18 months or so I want to add a pair of Spotbreast Angels as the centerpieces of the new tank. Griev had a pair in his 50 Lagoon and they looked awesome but I just can’t do that yet, need a bigger tank.

 

[jcolliii]

Well, dang it - my Milwaukee pinpoint pH monitor seems to be on it's way out. Won't keep calibration, numbers wildly varying - even with new battery. So decided to finally get back on the controller train. Broke down and bought a GHL mini wifi. I am super happy with my wifi outlets, and will continue to use those for most things, but will probably use the GHL for heater controlling as it is probably more reliable than the inkbird - which will go to the office tank, I suppose. Should reiterate - I have not had one single issue with the Inkbird heater controller. It is never off temp by more than 0.1 degree F - been super happy with it. This change is all about pH and not knowing what it is...

 

[jcolliii]

New inhabitant yesterday!

Blue tuxedo urchin. Approximately 1.25". Doing a great job seeking and destroying algae. Hoping that he'll keep coralline and hair down. Will augment his in-situ food with pieces of nori. Super fun little guy to watch!

 

[jcolliii]

OMG, this critter is AWESOME! Fairly small, fun to watch, and it gobbles down hair algae with delight! The couple small hair algae patches I had on frags are gone. Get this - the urchin was riding a snail today because the snail had algae on its shell! Seems to be a great answer to algae and you won't raise the ire of the tang police either!

Super awful cell phone photo with no filter, but you can see the urchin riding the snail like an algea eating cowboy! On a related note, I broke down and bought a clip on filter set for my phone for times like this when I don't want to break out the DSLR.

Awesome little addition to the tank! That snail's shell is now spotless. Going to give it a little piece of nori to see if it goes after it.

 

[jcolliii]

Wow, the snail's shell has been completely picked clean of coralline!

 

[TheWB]

OMG, this critter is AWESOME! Fairly small, fun to watch, and it gobbles down hair algae with delight! The couple small hair algae patches I had on frags are gone. Get this - the urchin was riding a snail today because the snail had algae on its shell! Seems to be a great answer to algae and you won't raise the ire of the tang police either!

Super awful cell phone photo with no filter, but you can see the urchin riding the snail like an algea eating cowboy! On a related note, I broke down and bought a clip on filter set for my phone for times like this when I don't want to break out the DSLR.

Awesome little addition to the tank! That snail's shell is now spotless. Going to give it a little piece of nori to see if it goes after it.

Awesome addition to your tank, seems to be doing its job well. I almost got one of those back when I was having severe algae issues but ended up going the chemical route instead. Good thing too because right now an urchin would stave in my tank. What clip on filter kit did you get?