WVNeds's Tanks

[WVNed]

I escaped to the basement for some peace and quiet. Watching my wife's family going through the what are we going to do with dad thing is trying. He is here right now. I am willing to do things none of them will do like bathing and dressing him. It has gone well but he is ready to leave. I never went through this with my mom and dad. It was just me and some ladies we hired to have 24 hour in home care. There were no negotiations about stuff unless I talked to myself.

Meh
All is going well with the tanks.

I splurged and got a TS-3 nitrate reactor. I have the sulfur and Seachem Matrix here. The ARM media was supposed to come today to get it going.
Apr 13 @11:19 AM Your package was damaged in transit. We will notify the sender with details., Huntington, WV
Apr 13 @9:39 AM Out For Delivery Today, Huntington, WV

So much for that.

Nitrates are at 33 which is not a problem but it takes a long while to get a sulfur reactor going. I have a smaller one running now.

I have always avoided controllers as more trouble than help but that isn't true anymore and I have come to appreciate it a lot.

It's riding herd on a lot of stuff for me. ATO, AWC, heaters, a kalk stirrer (both doseing and stirring) and my RODI water supply. The things most people always ask about like flow pumps and lights are already on perfectly good controllers designed to work them. I left them alone.

Instead of installing the Ranco controller I plugged 600 watts of heaters into the Hydros. If I need a little heat they come on. They are backed by the 900 watts on the Inkbird. This is working well. The humps in the line are when it gets cold enough to activate the Inkbird. So far I haven't tripped a breaker.

 

[WVNed]

The 5 gallon kalk reactor isnt big enough. I had to change it's type in Hydros to simple doser to keep from flushing it and have it run continuously. A 50ml/min dosing pump can add a lot of water overnight. 6x60x50 is 24000ml. So I had about 6 gallons too much water in the system, maybe more when I got up yesterday. I pumped it out and added salt and all was well.
The small nitrate reactor is already pulling 20ppm of nitrates from the effluent. I will hook the new big one to it in series and let it inoculate it. Waiting on the ARM media that got smashed in the mail and had to be reshipped.
Still trying to get the LED lights to produce a warmer look that matches the big tank. I guess I will increase the red and green channels again.

 

[BeltedCoyote]

All caught up, again. You’re making me wish I had a fish room. Big surprise of course. lol

really diggin the reconfigured super-sump. More ideas to chew on. Gandalf never disappoints

 

[WVNed]

All caught up, again. You’re making me wish I had a fish room. Big surprise of course. lol

really diggin the reconfigured super-sump. More ideas to chew on. Gandalf never disappoints

Thanks for reading the ramblings of a silly old man with a cat.

 

[WVNed]

Today we take Bear to Medvet in Columbus Ohio about getting his hip replaced. We have an appointment at 2.

Jill's younger brother came to be with Earnest. Earnest was supposed to stay here for a while and then go to the brothers house for a while. Her older brother is dealing with cancer right now and is out of the equation.
He is a government bureaucrat and talks like one. He made a presentation to us about how his house is too small for Earnest to stay there. His plan involves putting Earnest in assisted living here. Appointments have been made to see some places Friday.

This would be like stranding Earnest on a desert Isle. Except for being in the Air Force Earnest has spent his life in Moundsville, WV. He has lots of family there. His house is there. He wants to go home.
I feel like I have assisted in a kidnapping. I am the one that has to keep the victim comfortable.

No one is talking to Earnest. When a group of them get together I feel like I am in a room full of broken glass.
I told them he can tell them all to go shove it and take a taxi out of here.

I think Earnest is going to be a semi permanent resident here. I hate family politics.

Since the obvious thing to do is too difficult and expensive the bureaucrats plan must be followed. Inflated numbers and exaggerated unfounded claims are used to support it.
Jill's has many excellent qualities but being assertive with her family isn't one of them.

So I would have to take over. I am used to having to take over things. I have always done it without hesitation. until now. There isn't enough of me left to do it. A hard admission.

Meh
My friends in the new tank and old one are fine and oblivious to all of this

 

[WVNed]

Cleaned the glass. Kind of an early in the morning Zen thing while the house is quiet.

I am contemplating changing the big tank to LED.
I just ordered 2 WIFI strips for the Hydros to put under the 240. The WYZE smart plugs have gone off schedule again.

 

[Eagle_Steve]

Cleaned the glass. Kind of an early in the morning Zen thing while the house is quiet.

I am contemplating changing the big tank to LED.
I just ordered 2 WIFI strips for the Hydros to put under the 240. The WYZE smart plugs have gone off schedule again.

Refresh me on what is over the big tank? Halides?

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Cleaned the glass. Kind of an early in the morning Zen thing while the house is quiet.

I am contemplating changing the big tank to LED.
I just ordered 2 WIFI strips for the Hydros to put under the 240. The WYZE smart plugs have gone off schedule again.

what lights are you thinking as possible alternatives to what you’ve got going on now?

 

[WVNed]

Refresh me on what is over the big tank? Halides?

2 Hamilton Cebu Sun fixtures.
so 4 250w MH and 8 54 w T5

 

[WVNed]

what lights are you thinking as possible alternatives to what you’ve got going on now?

I think you are looking at them in the new lights I got for the 180
I am running the Noopsyches at 54% and the Coral covers at 25%

I am thinking of removing one K7 V3 from the 180 and using only 3 and getting 3 more and running 4 on the 240.
I am wondering if I should ditch T5 completely or get 2 of the cheaper 48 in non dimmable T5 hybrids.
Plenty of light with the Coral Covers
It seems BRS has non dimmable T5 hybrids on clearance. Hmmm
New lights for about $1000 with the energy savings and heat gone is tempting.
Getting Coral Covers again would be $700 more.

 

[WVNed]

My next Idea
Magnetic Melamine sheet cleaning

old Mag-Float
Mr Clean Sheet
Zip tie

 

[WVNed]

DIY Kalk Stirrer V1 has proven to work about 3 days holding 4.8 gallons being stirred once a day. I have Hydros programmed to use it in dynamic dosing mode and it doses 50-70ml every 30 minutes 39 times a day based on pH.
1100 and 4000ml are the limits set in Hydros. This is keeping my Alk at 9.5 or so with 2 part dosing a tiny amount.
But it is flushing. The incoming RODI water is diluting the saturated kalk faster than it can recover.
V1 can hold the pH between 8.3 and 8.4 for 2 days and then it drops to 8.2 and 8.3 after 4.

So Kalk stirrer V2 is underway. It will be made from a 22 gallon sump pump basin

that has a bolt on lid. Stirring will be done by a Rossmont wavemaker I have here controlled by Hydros. I am hoping to stop the flushing and hold the pH between 8.2 and 8.3 for a month.
Parts are on the workbench. 1 more trip to HD.
I would put a pH probe in it but that would need another Hydros unit so I have more ports, I am considering that.
Only an X3 or X4 have probe ports though.
Or I lose the ORP probe but it has saved my butt once now.

 

[WVNed]

The outer tissue of my large gorgonian has grown down and covered the plug it's on and onto the rock.
I didn't know it would do that. I assume it will start new stalks upward at some point.

 

[WVNed]

It looks like this in service. It sitting in a fake half whisky barrel planter to catch my spills. I placed play sand in the bottom so I could level it and pad of concrete block to elevate it off the floor.

This one is stirred by a wavemaker sealed inside. The top comes with uniseals for 2 inch PVC pipes and an opening with removable plug for a pump power cord. You apply a tape type gasket that is sticky on one side around the top and bolt the cover on.
I am experimenting with a fountain type delivery not in this pic. The tube in the vat goes down several inches into the kalk solution. The end over the sump is turned up so the level inside the vat appears in a clear tube. You adjust the height of the tube so the water level is very slightly below the end. When water goes into the tub it overflows out of this tube. I hope this keeps it from clogging which seems to be a frequent problem for kalk stirrers.

 

[WVNed]

Bear is at the emergency clinic for the night.
His spleen has been sent off for biopsy
The vet says cancer

 

[WVNed]

@Mike from TN
How ya doin. Cant be much worse than us.

 

[WVNed]

It's seems the sum of all our choices recently has led to an acceptable outcome for the time being.
Earnest has settled in, Bear is returning to himself for now. I started the process to get my right knee replaced.
Life goes on.

This has turned out how I imagined it.

A slight modification to the Kalk tub has started it working as expected. I made a new output tube out of slightly larger acrylic I bent with my heat gun.

I put a 4 pound package of BRS kalkwasser powder in. It's doing it's thing.

The algae is growing where it is supposed to.

The new nitrate reactor is bubbling inside so it is starting to work.

The rest is down here, ozone, bio pellets, skimmer and the other nitrate reactor I made.

Dr Fishensteins Laboratory​

 

[WVNed]

I fed the tank and the big eel came out

swam across the tank

and went in the little eels tunnels

so it comes zooming out

and sat there saying bad words for awhile.

 

[WVNed]

For some reason my long spine urchin has short spines now. Not sure how that would work. The other looks the same.

They are very pretty with bright blue and green colors

And the all seeing rectum

Snakes alive

My file fish went blind and died. The new one isn't eating aiptasia so there are many tiny ones coming along. I may try again with another. My old one was a champ and you never saw any. But they were there waiting.

 

[WVNed]

I finally got time tonight to do some testing.
NO3 17.6, down from 45. Denitrators are online and working.
PO4 0.04 with LaCl almost off. I think 5 ml a day into 650 gallons is nothing really.
Alk is 9 with 2 part off. The kalk stirrer is doing the work.
I am growing a lot of algae in the 29 gallon and dumping it as well.

The new simpler bigger way is going as planned. You never know when you build things for sure.

I have added a coral beauty, rusty angel and kleins butterfly to the 180.
I also added a PBT and pearlscale butterfly. They both were paper thin, started to eat and I was hopeful but on day 5 they were not to be seen in the tank in the morning.
Now if I could just keep the glass cleaned.
Next to get the 75 set up in the fish room. No hurry there.

Bear spent the day at the vet today. He stopped eating yesterday and is very lethargic. We thought the internal bleeding had started again. It will sometime soon from the cancer but they think it is his stomach. Nothing seen internally on ultrasound or x-ray. I cooked him some chicken and rice and he at a bit for dinner.
The death watch continues. It is very hard. He only has a few months at most with this aggressive blood born cancer.
Spent the morning broken up and crying and had a headache the rest of the day. It is what it is.