The everything's wrong 75 build

[Projects with Sam]

looking good!

 

[kdx7214]

Another update. Received my Robo Tank (Thanks Rob!) and will begin working on that today or tomorrow. Went to the new LFS the other day and picked up 8 snails and a 1" six line wrasse (who eats like a pig lol). Also learned that it's impossible to get a picture of a wrasse in a lot of rock work.

The wrasse and the molly are getting along extremely well. They swim together a lot and seem to seek out each other's company.

Of course there is always some bad with good. Apparently the snails had aiptasia spores or something on them. Two days later and I have 2 tiny ones in the sump

 

[Projects with Sam]

doh! I scrub all my CUC shells with an old toothbrush and try to dip just the shell part in RODI. stressed-out my fair-share of snails that way... Want a zoanthid and duncan eating file fish? hehe. good luck!

 

[kdx7214]

doh! I scrub all my CUC shells with an old toothbrush and try to dip just the shell part in RODI. stressed-out my fair-share of snails that way... Want a zoanthid and duncan eating file fish? hehe. good luck!

I didn't even think of using a toothbrush. It's not a huge deal as live rock is coming from Live Rock n Reef sometime in the next week or two, so that'll have aiptasia on it. Still kinda disappointed though

 

[kdx7214]

So I did an accidental test of the heaters in the tank today. It was really warm yesterday so I turned off the thermostat on the furnace and forgot to turn it back on overnight. It hit 66F in the house overnight, but the heaters did the job!

 

[kdx7214]

So I received the live rock I ordered from Live Rock 'n Reef today and got it in the tank. Overall I'm not really impressed. The rocks are dense and essentially look like giant turds with stuff on them. I'll post pictures below. I ordered 25 lbs and received 23 lbs so overall not too bad. I just wish KP Aquatics had had stock when I placed the order or I would have tried them. From what I can tell there are no live corals at all, but there are a few types of macro algae and 7 large bivalves, all of which survived shipment somehow. I dosed a great deal of phyto hoping to keep the bivalves alive which is why the pics are blurry.

The one big aww from this is there was a bright red baby brittle starfish in the bottom of the bag. It had been crushed during shipment. I love the red and the blue brittle stars

 

[kdx7214]

So, in the vain hope of printing stuff to use for the tank, I bought a Creality Ender 3 v2 3d printer. I've been at it for over a week now, and the frustration is beyond belief. I'm not sure I didn't just waste $300 on a printer.

 

[Projects with Sam]

There is a learning curve. I've found the filament makes a huge difference. are you trying PLA first? I had a lot of trouble doing PETG and needed to start off with PLA first. The PETG tolerances are really tight.

Are you able to get simple prints?
One thing that tripped me up was the importance of the feed line. The bowden tube - if there is any play in/out in the extruder or the hot end you'll get jammed filament. you may need to take those out, cut a little off each end (use a razor blade and make sure cuts are at 90 degrees) and re-seat them. I've had weeks-long issues from plastic squeezing out between the tube and the heating block requiring me to do a cold-pull to get that bit out before the printer would work again.

I'll try to help you through this - thats a nice printer; just they sometimes need a little adjustment.

 

[kdx7214]

There is a learning curve. I've found the filament makes a huge difference. are you trying PLA first? I had a lot of trouble doing PETG and needed to start off with PLA first. The PETG tolerances are really tight.

Are you able to get simple prints?
One thing that tripped me up was the importance of the feed line. The bowden tube - if there is any play in/out in the extruder or the hot end you'll get jammed filament. you may need to take those out, cut a little off each end (use a razor blade and make sure cuts are at 90 degrees) and re-seat them. I've had weeks-long issues from plastic squeezing out between the tube and the heating block requiring me to do a cold-pull to get that bit out before the printer would work again.

I'll try to help you through this - thats a nice printer; just they sometimes need a little adjustment.

Right now I can't even get a small rectangle to print on the bed. The prime line (along the left side that Cura puts in automatically) gets printed just fine. Anything else never prints. I just get a blob of plastic around the print head. I've leveled, releveled, run bl-touch, and asked for help (and received it) on Discord, but nobody can seem to figure out why it won't work.

I've now run out of filament (PLA - I do have some petg, but have not modded it to handle that yet). The Post Awful destroyed my filament order at 9:41pm yesterday and it was apparently so bad they marked it undeliverable and returned it for a refund.

 

[Projects with Sam]

Right now I can't even get a small rectangle to print on the bed. The prime line (along the left side that Cura puts in automatically) gets printed just fine. Anything else never prints. I just get a blob of plastic around the print head. I've leveled, releveled, run bl-touch, and asked for help (and received it) on Discord, but nobody can seem to figure out why it won't work.

I've now run out of filament (PLA - I do have some petg, but have not modded it to handle that yet). The Post Awful destroyed my filament order at 9:41pm yesterday and it was apparently so bad they marked it undeliverable and returned it for a refund.

hmm that is odd. ok, take a kids gluestick and when the bed is almost done heating, pass the gluestick (like elmers) over the spot where the print will go. see if that helps with adhesion. if that doesn't help. try putting the rectangle in any of the corners of the build plate.
Sometimes the baldpates are warped so you level the corners and the run the line then goto print in the middle and the gap is too big.

 

[kdx7214]

hmm that is odd. ok, take a kids gluestick and when the bed is almost done heating, pass the gluestick (like elmers) over the spot where the print will go. see if that helps with adhesion. if that doesn't help. try putting the rectangle in any of the corners of the build plate.
Sometimes the baldpates are warped so you level the corners and the run the line then goto print in the middle and the gap is too big.

Finally found what was causing the darn thing to mess up. Somehow a new version of Cura that I installed defaulted to turn on Retraction. Turned that off (after I learned about it) and now it's working again. I'm supposed to have more filament tomorrow and will try printing the mounting brackets for Robo-tank

 

[kdx7214]

hmm that is odd. ok, take a kids gluestick and when the bed is almost done heating, pass the gluestick (like elmers) over the spot where the print will go. see if that helps with adhesion. if that doesn't help. try putting the rectangle in any of the corners of the build plate.
Sometimes the baldpates are warped so you level the corners and the run the line then goto print in the middle and the gap is too big.

For some reason the problem turned out to be retraction. It was turned on in Cura (no clue how) and that was causing the filament to pull back along the nozzle instead of onto the bed. Now it's working and will begin printing stuff for the tank as soon as the temperature tower and flow cube are done and I make the needed adjustments. Thanks!

 

[kdx7214]

hmm that is odd. ok, take a kids gluestick and when the bed is almost done heating, pass the gluestick (like elmers) over the spot where the print will go. see if that helps with adhesion. if that doesn't help. try putting the rectangle in any of the corners of the build plate.
Sometimes the baldpates are warped so you level the corners and the run the line then goto print in the middle and the gap is too big.

Thought I'd ask about a new problem. I'm trying to print the wall mount plates for robo tank. when I print, the left side (from the front of the printer) is fine, but the right side is squished to half the height or less. The bed is level (according to UBL there is less than 0.2 difference across the bed).

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks!

 

[Projects with Sam]

re-slice after moving the wall mount plates around a bit. Could just be a bum slice.

 

[kdx7214]

Well, I guess it's official. I declare that the Creality Ender 3 is a piece of crap printer. Two weeks in and I still can't get a print. I'm now going to have to get creative with mounting the reef-pi and some other stuff I had hoped to print brackets for.

On the plus side, there is now a hole in the wall with a drywall access panel in it and I've gotten a power strip with a long enough cord to reach, so moving of equipment will begin very soon!

 

[kdx7214]

So I was working on the 3d printer yet again and am about to give up. So to cheer myself up I decided to clean the tank and take some pictures.

Photo dump ensues. As you can see, the snails have been busy getting at it

 

[kdx7214]

Did some work on the tank today. Moved the rock away from the back wall of the tank. I hope to get some GSP growing back there. I really like the look of that as the back of the tank. I've also discovered that I have a couple of dead spots without much flow. Going to have to figure out what to do about that. I really don't like the look of cables running everywhere and don't have the funds for a Gyre or one of those stick to the glass with magnets ones. Might have to get a couple of cheap power heads and go that route.

 

[kdx7214]

The last week has been difficult here. My brother had surgery and had some serious complications, and it looks like my wife has a large tumor on her scalp - doc says it's likely skin cancer. When I get stressed I do two things: I eat and I buy things. Not very smart but there it is.

Today I did a thing. While I was stressing at the hospital I saw the Tidal Gardens sale. I was browsing the frags and saw three that I loved. I only had money for two of them, and that's okay too. So I ordered two different frags of Stylocoeniella. I know they're an encrusting coral and will have to make arrangements for that. I might put one of them on the back glass of the tank and see if it'll like growing vertically. I have a nice small rock sitting on the sand that I'll probably put the other frag on. Just have to see how it goes.

 

[Projects with Sam]

Oh man I'm sorry to hear about the news. Sometimes just staring at my tank for awhile helps me organize my thoughts and compartmentalize bad news. Best wishes for you and your family!

 

[Oldsman]

Sorry to hear about your family's issues, sending ya positive vibes !
Gotta ask whats the mat below your tank between the tank and stand ? We're going to be setting up a 75 later this yr , and admiring your stand and sump work. Never thought about using a 40b for sump , looks good