RFBF's Five Footer

redfishbluefish · Mar 21, 2016

My stupidity will never cease to amaze me! Yes, another DOH! moment.

After finishing up the equipement cabinet in flat black....spray painted....I started repainting the stand to match the side cabinet. I wanted to do this in steps since it will be sprayed. I turned off the skimmer and put masking tape along the floor. I then used a piece of cardboard to "mask" the areas I didn't want to paint....the floor, the tank, to mention two.

Here's the thing....I should know about overspray. I use to paint cars back in the late 60's, early 70's. This was way before paint booths and fancy filtration systems to filter out the paint. We simply would put up polyethyene film around the area in the shop where we would paint the car. We would wear full suits and masks, but they didn't do much. I could stick my pinky finger in my ear a week later and say, "Oh look, we painted that car blue!"

Anyway, after finishing painting the front of the stand....and thinking everything looks good, I pull up the tape......DOH!

Lucky for me, a little Pine Sol and scrubbing got up the over-spray on the floor. The glass on the tank was covered in black dust as well, but easily cleaned up. Saved!

melypr1985 · Mar 21, 2016

lol. Sounds like something I would do. Good thing it was easy enough to fix!

redfishbluefish · Apr 3, 2016

When on vacation, disaster happens!

My MP10 crapped out (no lights on the driver), and so did my little LED notification light for low reservoir water (mentioned above, posts 78, 79 and 80), that I just installed.

I've started looking at the MP10 and am pretty sure it's the driver. I have my son dropping off a spare he has tomorrow to test each component. The other issue I have is not knowing if I have a WES or just an ES. So I've shot a query off to Vortech Customer Service with the serial numbers. The case has the "W" on it, but I was told that it's only wireless it the "W" lights up. Mine never lit up, so I'm not sure.

The reservoir notification light will be looked at tomorrow. My electronics expert told me that I should have put a resistor in the circuit because LED's don't have resistance, and you need that. I know nothing about electronics so I'll probably just stare at it for an hour or so while sipping coffee and eventually call him to come over and straighten it out.

Don't go on vacation!

redfishbluefish · May 23, 2016

As I mentioned in the post above, my low water LED light crapped out. I'm not surprised, considering I was running this bipin LED at 2.9 volts....the upper limit of the LED.....with a wall-wart that probably is not very accurate with voltage.

I'm guessing it burnt out on the first low water situation.

I finally got around to fixing it. We had an electric wine opener that was no longer holding a charge. It had an LED in the top that I pulled out. I also decided to use a resister to "lower" the voltage going to the LED. Here's the LED in my little holder, with the resister....and the old LED off to the left.

And here it is installed showing low water in the ATO Reservior.

(FYI, we now have to manually open our wine bottles....the humanity!

)

redfishbluefish · May 30, 2016

Switching Teams: AC to DC

I've made the switch from an AC MAG 9.5 to a Waveline DC6000 DC return pump. (Thank you Tommy for a great deal) In the process, with the extra flow, I built my first manifold....a single pipe feed to my dual BRS reactor....does that still qualify as a manifold?

When I figured out what's needed for my biopellet reactor, I plan on adding another tee to feed that as well. So in the process, I've now eliminated a Cobalt MJ`1200 as well as the MAG 9.5.....and with the biopelllets, the Sicce Syncra 1.5 pump on my JNS Alpha 2 biopellet reactor, in the future.

Back to the return pump, I'm a backup fanatic, and have three MAG 9.5's that I'll continue to use as backups. I originally planned on simply putting in the half union to connect to my system, but I could not find a union that fit the one I put in nine years ago. I'm assuming it's a Chinese thing, since the ones I find now are all made in China, and my original one has no label of origin. So I had to cut out and replace the entire union.

In addition to the new pump, I'm not crazy about hook-and-loop (Velcro) and made brackets for the power supply and pump controller.

It's been running for about an hour now and I have no complaints!

kschweer · May 30, 2016

Love the indicator light for the ato!! Going to have to look into this for when I get around to hiding my ato container.

redfishbluefish · May 31, 2016

kschweer said:
Love the indicator light for the ato!! Going to have to look into this for when I get around to hiding my ato container.

Kev, super simple little DIY project. The only thing I really needed to buy was the horizontal float switch. The wiring over to the stand was an old extension cord with a bad end, and the LED and resistor came out of our wine opener, and the wall transformer was from a real old rechargeable screwdriver that no longer held a charge.

redfishbluefish · Jun 1, 2016

New Pump Arrangement for New Saltwater

Since I've switched out my MAG return pump for a DC Waveline, I now have three MAG 9.5's sitting around. I'm still planning on using the MAG's as backups for the Waveline, but I really don't need all three......I better not!

I'm currently using a MAG 7 for pumping in new saltwater. The issue is that the hose coming off the top has a tendency to kink. So I decided to hard plumb the MAG 9.5 up to the neck of the Brute to minimize hose kink. Here is the original MAG 7 with hose:

And here is the new MAG 9.5 hard plumbed...with the same hose attached at the top:

And the two pumps side by side:

The MAG 7 actually has 1/2" fittings on the pump while the MAG 9.5 has 3/4". However, I could only find 1/2" CPVC hose connector fittiings, so I still have a considerable restriction at that connection:

Still, I'm hoping it also pumps a little faster!

redfishbluefish · Jun 19, 2016

Worst Sump In the World!!!

My sump is an embarrassment. It is totally loaded with hair algae and calupra that I added a while back, and now can't get rid of, not to mention the aptasia and bubble algae. It also has a deep sand bed, and I think that is the root of my problem, with it producing nitrates and phosphates. Here are a couple shots of the swamp.

Here's what I found behind my return bubble trap:

So I made up 50 gallons of new saltwater and totally emptied the swamp and scrapped down the sides with a straight edge razor. I also shovelled out the sand and vacuumed out the remains and then refilled it with fresh saltwater. Here it is now without sand and only the corals I had in there.

I think it looks a little better!

newyorkreefer · Jun 19, 2016

you very handy man - love the stand

kschweer · Jun 19, 2016

Nice job cleaning!! Mines about due for a good cleaning.

SeahorseKeeper · Jun 19, 2016

Great job!

redfishbluefish · Jun 19, 2016

Kevin and Krista, as always, thank you for the kind words. And @newyorkreefer , first off welcome to R2R, and thank you for your kind words. I am retired and a tinkerer (always have been), so I need to spend my time somewhere! I'm also close to owning ever tool known to man, and that helps a whole bunch....having the right tools. I'd suggest you start your own Member's Tank thread and tell us about what you have.

bknapp · Jun 19, 2016

That sump got nasty!

redfishbluefish · Jun 20, 2016

Well I pulled a @Paul B today. I was up at our waterfront and saw that the waters were very choppy, with a fair amount of green and red algae on the beach (must be a storm at sea). I picked up one of the smaller pieces of red and brought it back to the house. Here it is in the refugium. Has anyone else done this....especially with algae from cooler waters. Not sure how this cold water algae will do in warm water.

redfishbluefish · Jun 29, 2016

I've been looking at a Diamond Goby for some time and finally picked one up this past Sunday. In my visits to a number of LFS's I've seen as they eat sand and spew it out their gill slits, but never saw one that had a cave. One day after putting my guy in the tank, he's mining a good size cave under a large Frogspawn and putting a large pile of sand to the side of the Frogspawn. He moved so much sand the Frogspawn tilted over into the glass. I haven't tested, but I'm sure all this movement of sand spiked my nitrates and phosphates.

The large pile of sand was in the right spot to now get picked up by an MP40....so that pile had to go.

With inspiration from @jlanger and @bmac16, I decided to make an artifical cave out of 1 inch pipe and a couple small pieces of rock. This was all glued together with JB Weld Kwik Epoxy.

The concern I now had was having to move old sand to bury this cave in the corner of the tank. So what I did was siphon the sand right to the bottom glass sucking out some nasty looking water. In the process of picking it up in the siphon tube, I moved the sand over to the side. When I finally got down to glass, I put the cave in place and then reversed the sand movement to cover the cave. Here it is in place.....I think I'll eventually put the Frogspawn back, but now hoping the Goby moves in. Otherwise, I'm sure he'll start digging another hole some place else....and then I don't know what I'd do.

hybridazn · Jun 29, 2016

That led indicator is a snazzy idea, I might have to do something similar

chefjpaul · Jun 29, 2016

Nice goby condo.

I had one living in pvc that my rock structure was on in my last tank.
Maybe add a bit of sand inside and some fine rubble around, as they like to move stuff.

reeferman0767 · Jun 30, 2016

wow man just wow, i just tiled for 10 hrs then looked at my pvone and have been reading tbis thread for another 1 1/2 hrs best diy work ive seen period

Paul B · Jun 30, 2016

That red algae will last a few weeks in your tank, then fall apart. The fish don't eat it much if at all but it is cool looking. I went collecting yesterday and got a bucketful of amphipods.

The bright green stuff that looks like hair algae is eaten and lives a long time.