Hey Everyone,
Dave B/ o2manyfish / the guy who posted on Facebook. Yes I have a Mindstream! Yes it's in my tank and Yes it's been working. I have been in touch with Mindstream for many years. I was part of their focus groups and kept in touch with them. They sent an email that the units were available for sale and a link. I followed the link, made the order, and in fact within just a couple of days I had a unit in hand and 20 mins later in my tank.
It wasn't until all the Conspiracy Theory popped up on Facebook and a few other forums that I found out (from Mindstream), that a few people were sent the email to test the website, shopping cart and fulfillment system. I have no idea how many people got that email or took advantage of the opportunity.
But the fact is the unit is up and running. And for any of you Yahoos calling bologna -- Goto my live webcam at
www.o2manyfish.com/webcam - And if you can get your Neanderthal Fingers to use your mouse you can Move the camera and zoom in on the top left corner of my 400g display tank and see a Mindstream inside the tank.
For me, the price and subscription, is nothing compared to the potential losses should any parameter go out of whack.
I have a complex Apex system - and I trust it about as much as I trust the govt that we are going to have a 100% free healthcare system for all by the next election. And the investment I have in Neptune Products is much more than the Mindstream cost. And the amount of Neptune Products that I have to have spares on the shelf for is more than the value of the Mindstream.
I also have the Alkatronic.
--------------------------
To respond on a different topic of differences in controlling Alkalinity yes I have learned alot by measuring my Alk as much as 24 times a day.
My system is different than most in that I have 1300g and only 400g is inside the house. The rest is outside and sitting under the sun.
Prior to Alkatronic (15 months ago) I would test Alk and tweak the CalcRx only when something looked off. Once I started measuring 12x a day I discovered that while the Alk would always be pretty much the same at the same time of day - that in fact the swing during the day was over 1.5dkh. The frag tanks outside in the sun were sucking down the Alk, and then once the sunsets the CalcRx starts bringing it back up.
I finally had everything dialed in. I was running a Aquarium Engineering Calc Rx with an effluent of 700ml/min using Dastaco media. I went into my display tank and with a hammer and chisel knocked off a 30"x6" chunk of ORA Jedi Mind Truck. Within an hour I got an Alk Alert. Fragging just one colony out of 500+ pcs of coral sent the entire system into Alk shut down. I had to lower the effluent to 380ml/min. It was 5 days of slowly bringing it back up to get back to 700ml/min
When I found out the DKH swing during the day this past winter I upgraded to a Dastaco EXT 9. Now I thought I could keep up with Alk consumption. Over the winter I dialed in the DKH and I started dosing Coral Essentials. Everything was doing good (great actually). Then all of a sudden my Alk started dropping. Over a period of a week it just kept going down.
I wasn't sure what was going on. I increased the output of the Dastaco, but still wasn't maintaining. And my pH was getting higher and higher.
What happened was we hit the Summer Equinox and finally there was more daylight than darkness. And within a few days of this transition my 1300g system responded. Before the Equinox I was running my Dastaco at 1 vent a 3.5 setting. Currently I am running at 3 vents and a setting of 5 - Each additional vent supposedly doubles the output.
On Bright sunny days like today in Los Angeles my 1300g system is consuming .5dkh per hour... Not a typo. If I run out of CO2, or if the Alk gets too high and I shut off the Rx .5dkh an hour.
I also see changes in Alk consumption based on feeding or based on doing sump or tank maintenance. While some of these might seem trivial, on my size system minimizing theses swings makes a big difference.
Dave B
