Waterbox 100.3 Orphek Back to SPS Reef Madness

[hart24601]

The led chip seemed super glued onto the board, the +/- are soldered on. I haven't seen reefbreeders' fixture up close so I don't know. I guess if you have a heat gun it's possible to remove it without destroying it. If this is the case I take back what I said. Replacing the whole board is quite the work because you have to take everything apart and put them back. I guess what I am trying to say is that it's disappointing that just because of 1 bad led you have to replace the whole board. This was the one bad led on my fixture.

Ah yeah I can’t guarantee it of course as I didn’t ever replace an led on orphek but plenty of the old value fixtures and they needed plenty of convincing to detach and using a heat gun to melt the connections. I *think* these would be the same and replaceable in the same way. Either way much more do-able than a cluster type setup.

 

[hart24601]

Look through this manual it walks you through trouble shooting. I used a wire to jumper the leds to find the bad one. Orphek Troubleshooting

Ah, yeah it just wasn’t worth my time as when I discovered they were not working the icon kits came out and I wanted to upgrade it all anyway. The new layout seems to give better blending, I think they learned from their bars. Thankfully the new parts all work just fine!

 

[hart24601]

Nice to see the clams happier, funny you can’t tell in photos but the mantles are flatter and extended differently. Bounce seems happy enough too. Just iPhone no filter shots. Didn’t take a pic of the blue clam as it isn’t in good spot for iPhone pic

 

[biecacka]

Looking great! I recently upgraded to the V4 right before the iCon came out. I am torn if it’s worth it. However, your tank looks great either way man!

corey

 

[hart24601]

Looking great! I recently upgraded to the V4 right before the iCon came out. I am torn if it’s worth it. However, your tank looks great either way man!

corey

Yeah that isn’t an each choice! I was Oddly enough lucky to put off upgrading and right when I decided I needed to the icon board and control came out.

thanks for the nice words! The tank is getting there…..

 

[hart24601]

The alk demand has increased since the upgrade as well as one would expect. I now am running 50 seconds each 15 min. That’s about 10 seconds more than before. Trident makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on it.

200s per hour is 3.3 min and the brs doser is 50ml/min. 167ml/hr=4,000ml a day right on funny enough. A whole lot less then when had sump clams though!

I bought a conductivity tester as my 50g brute seems to vary a bit in potency over time so keeping record of it. It seems to drop them go up a bit again. I think as the volume drops the Rubbermaid tapers down and the surface area decreases or the alternative is the extra on the bottom is a gradient of higher concentration which is where they uptake hose is so in that situation the impact is minimal.

 

[hart24601]

The two probes read around 900 in clear saturated solution. One a bit lower. Here are results from the container over time once settled:


10/15 9047950
10/20 887/846
10/24 845/830
10/16 860/830
10/30 860/850
11/2 850/825
11/5 870/835
11/11 830/810

refilled despite having a good amount left.

I don’t tend to see practical impact over the course of the container on alk, however I wanted to check conductivity just so see as I’m always suspicious of increased demand.

I made new on 11/14 and it was about 850 and several days later in the 830 range so might just be error or how the kalk makes a gradient.

 

[hart24601]

Couldn’t help get this coral from battlecorals sale. I had it years ago but it died in a crash, it has the most interesting colors and hopefully does well.

 

[hart24601]

My test to see if could graft a goni has not worked well. They didn’t kill each other but the Ora red grows a lot faster.

 

[hart24601]

So I got cocky and wanted to take offline the UV as it seems I get that way every 6mo or so and see if I can’t just defeat dinos without it. The outbreak got out of hand fast and while nothing has died yet do have a lot of issues. Hopefully won’t crash. I reinstalled the UV and got a better one a Tmc 600 vectron for the sump. Also using my oxydatiors that I normally leave empty. It’s helping but these came back more stubborn. For the moment stopping dosing (except kalk) and w/c and am just hoping to get PE back and color. Yuck.

Got a couple extra Phillips bulbs from bulb depot as well. You can see I like to take painters tape and write the date I put in or start a new bulb. I also where equipment plugs in wrap a tag around the cord and write what it is. Has made life much easier! I didn’t go fancy with the Tmc mounting or plumbing, no need and I think you, in many cases, do more harm than good.

mounted with reuseable cable ties, love those things, and just 1/2” black tubing. The thick ties also work to keep the tube round in spots it might pinch. Connected to sicce 1.0 and the output is right at sicce rating of 240gph, which surprised me with the 1/2” tubing but those are good pumps.

 

[hart24601]

I also snagged vivid 3d printed tools for cleaning. I read sicce nano was too weak so got a mj1200. Combined with tubing into a filter sock it works great for sucking up detritus and easier than the canister filter I was using. I can see the the sicce being far too weak and am glad got the mj1200 for it. You do have to manually remove small chucks particles but it’s still very nice and those would clog the pump so better they get stuck on the intake so can remove there.

also before this breakout got a crayola meltdown from jokers corals. Nice place. They held off shipping until healed and got warmer. This was before the dino attack so hope it does ok. This is their pic of the frag, very nice and with all the colors and several mouths.

 

[hart24601]

And finally I went on a mission to clean up the dosing lines and cords on the sump downstairs with looms and zip ties. With trident lines, apex probe lines, 5 dosing pumps and ato lines and awc lines plus the other equipment cords and the carbon container for the skimmer outside air line it was pretty crazy. It’s far from pretty and sure isn’t anything to brag about like people making beautiful equipment stands and hiding all cords, but it’s 100x better even if still a mess. One nice part of the basement is can separate the plug ins for greater safety vs all under stand. I still keep fire extinguishers under the tank stand upstairs and next to sump though.

 

[Miami Reef]

Are you using kalkwasser to supply your calcium and alkalinity?

 

[hart24601]

Yep, for right now my daily evap is enough to totally use kalk. When I had the big clams I used 6L of kalk a day plus (I think) around 100ml/day of all for reef.
I have apex turn on brs dosing pump every 15 min.

 

[Miami Reef]

Psst I’ll never use Kalk!

Randy’s 2 part sodium hydroxide and calcium chloride is like kalkwasser (same PH effect) but it can be dosed in the same concentration as regular 2 part.

I spoke to Randy and he said the PH effect for sodium hydroxide is the same as kalkwasser: its per unit of DKH dosed!

No more gallons and gallons of kalk needed!

 

[hart24601]

Psst I’ll never use Kalk!

Randy’s 2 part sodium hydroxide and calcium chloride is like kalkwasser (same PH effect) but it can be dosed in the same concentration as regular 2 part.

I spoke to Randy and he said the PH effect for sodium hydroxide is the same as kalkwasser: its per unit of DKH dosed!

No more gallons and gallons of kalk needed!

Yeah it’s probably buried in this thread somewhere but I used that I think the day after he posted the new recipe. Or at least ordered the components to do so. I used it for quite a while, however even at 1x concentration to regular 2 part my lines crusted and hardened. I don’t remember but you can probably find a few of my posts on that thread!

For my setup kalk is just easier to mix once a month or 2 in a 50g brute and use one dosing pump.

I think I actually went from hydroxide to all for reef then added kalk then moved to kalk only once I gave the clams to the zoo.

 

[hart24601]

Heck I even called out Ryan at brs about offering Randy’s/Jim new recipe shortly after he released it, but Ryan said sodium hydroxide was something they were not comfortable carrying. Can’t remember if that was here or on FB though.

 

[Miami Reef]

Heck I even called out Ryan at brs about offering Randy’s/Jim new recipe shortly after he released it, but Ryan said sodium hydroxide was something they were not comfortable carrying. Can’t remember if that was here or on FB though.

Sodium hydroxide can cause burns. It’s kind of like muriatic acid, but the basic version.

It’s understandable why they don’t carry it - liability.

 

[hart24601]

Sodium hydroxide can cause burns. It’s kind of like muriatic acid, but the basic version.

It’s understandable why they don’t carry it - liability.

Yeah I was still disappointed since I have had bad luck ordering “food grade” items from Amazon that clearly were not…. Crashed my tank once, so I was hoping they might offer a tested quality source. While it sure can be dangerous it’s just drain cleaner you can get any any Walmart but it’s a moot point since they won’t do it for me to complain lol. Besides it had too many drawbacks long term for me anyway.

 

[Hydrored]

How is the tank doing since the Orphek upgrade?