finsNfur

Wow, you don't do things in a small way, do you? I bet the new tank looks great by now. The old one was certainly stunning.

gpodio

Filtration

Filtration is composed of an Eheim Pro 3 2080 canister filter and a smaller 2217 on battery backup. I'm using the Eheim intakes inserted in the tank's overflow boxes, these also act as surface skimmers. The return of the filters are plumbed into the tank's return plumbing...

A Coralife Turbo Twist 18W UV sterilizer and a Hydor ETH 300W heater are plumbed in-line with the canister return.

A SEIO M1500 (1500g/hr) is used in the tank for circulation

gpodio

Auto Top-Off (ATO)

The auto top-off is left over from the reef setup. Originally the ATO was connected to a timer which turned it on for a couple hours twice a day, this was important to reuce TDS creep through the RO membrane. I have bypassed the RO and DI stages so only the pre-filters are used.

The RO/DI filter:


The float valve keeps the bucket full of filtered water. Inside the bucket is a little Eheim pump connected to plastic ice maker tubing going to the tank:

PS. The bucket is also useful for dosing things over a couple days such as traces...

This is the solenoid float switch that senses a low water level in the tank and turns on the pump in the bucket above:


...and this is the tube from the pump in the bucket:





Automatic Water Changes

With the ATO in place, I only needed to find a way to remove water from the tank at a rate that was slower than the top-off rate. I used a second little Eheim pump inside one of the overflows to pump water out and into a drain:



The "T" splits the flow from the pump between the drain line and a short piece that returns water into the tank (I bent it by heating it). This serves three purposes:

- Breaks the syphon of water draining out the tank once the pump stops
- Slows down the rate of water being drained to make sure it's not faster than the top-off rate
- Stirs up the organic film that tends to accumulate on the surface inside the overflows

The drain pump is controlled by the computer and turns on for 12 hours every friday. This is about 100 gallon change. The slow rate causes no swing in PH or temperature. Although the carbon block filters in the ATO 'should' cover most bases, I do add 30-40ml of Tetra AquaSafe in the tank once a week to avoid any long term accumulation of anything they may miss.

WeedCali

That is so awesome! i wanna see more pics and info on this!

dennis

Waves hi to Giancarlo, waves hi to Phil!

Beautiful reef you had there but nice to see you back on this side. That controller is terrific. It may seem like overkill to some but I can't imaging dealing with a tank that big without some automation. Think of standing there with a hose and siphon for your weekly water change The auto top off is my biggest envy (well, that and a house with a tank that big in it).

For scaping though, you totally need larger rocks, much larger rocks. You should throw a scaping party!

gpodio

Thank you! I admit I've never been an aquascaper and I'm still trying to kick the habit of collecting plant species... However the rocks did bore me, I've removed them from the right half so the tank now looks like a 50:50 igwami/dutch layout. The H. micranthemoides that covered the foreground is also gone, that served extremely well as a filler during initial setup, I've replaced it with glosso on the substrate and HC in the cracks between the rocks. In the following month or so I will decide which look I prefer and tear out the half that looses the vote.

I've also started to use the 2x250W MH lamps for a 3 hour midday peak, so I'm kind of dropping out of the "low light" category for now but once it fills in I'll see if the growth remains compact with the fluorescents alone. Using a sunrise/sunset program I had in place for the reef tank, it's cool to see the plants tilting East in the morning and West in the afternoon... I wonder if such movement helps in any way compared to static lighting, I would think it could effects flow patterns and shadowing to some extent... The 400W bulb is coming in handy for taking photos and x-raying the fish

As soon as I have enough plant mass to play with I will see if there are any locals interested in a scaping party! Anyone here from Philly??

Other updates, I've started dosing 1ml per hour of Metricide 14, this should speed up the HC as I only had a small sample to start with. I'm growing HC and glosso emersed again so that will help provide the bulk I need soon.

On a side note, I had a friend/plant dealer come visit the other day... Oddly he was interested in a tiger lotus I've had for 10 years, he said he hasn't seen specimins like this in a long time... the ones he had pictures of in his catalog seem very blandly colored and the patterns on the leaves are hardly noticeable... I think he's just comparing it to his own (limited) resources honestly, but he's got me curious about it as I was debating removing it from the tank and therefore letting go of it permanently... Probably just environmental differences.

Regards,
Giancarlo Podio

Aquaticz

Giancarlo... I am awe struck & You are amazing. You have a techie mind for sure. . Iam subbing so I can see you tweak things and make this system most definetly - one of a kind. Excellent work

cliffclof

I would like to see the tank and how well it is all working.

Esteroali

You must have a very, very big brain.

gpodio

Thanks! I'll take a photo this weekend and try to continue the write-up... we're pretty much caught up now, I spent the last week or so rewiring the house and reconfiguring the network, added a NAS to use as storage for the video cameras and so forth... I want to record an entire year of this setup and watch the tank go thorugh it's various stages and problems and being able to access the logs of what was added, test results and so forth... I have been keeping detailed tank logs for over 20 years and they are so worth the effort, seems like every time I open a page from the past I learn or remember something new. I also keep photos as a visual log to complement the written one, but a video log should be fun, specially sped up as a time lapse.

The most interesting part of having such a setup is that everything is planned for, there is little room for human error and the results are very evident when you tweak things. I had started to use the metal halides for a midday peak and clearly did not work out well at all... BGA started to cover the entire foreground, rocks and eventually onto the plants. I let it get to a "bad" point on purpose and then started to play with the program, making a single change at a time and waiting it out to see what effects it had. On BGA it's just so eivident that too much light was the key cause, at least in this case, but so was 'something' in the water... I started by letting the system perform a 24 hour water change, by the time the change was complete it was evident that the thickness of the film had greatly been reduced, the glosso under it was visible once again, but a day after the fact it was back to normal. I repeated this 3 times over the course of a week until I no longer saw any benefit of doing so. I then shut down the midday peak and returned to my original plan of a "low(ish) light tank". The reduction of light stopped it from spreading and I vacumed the remainder out last week. The tank is now operating on the two 40W AquaRays for 12 hours a day (overdriven @ 110W each). Turning the UV light on or off seemed to have little to no effect on the spread of BGA.

The substrate is also showing signs of maturing, long gone are the initial "fuzzies" typical of a new tank and the crypts are no longer showing any signs of deficiencies (seemed like nitrogen deficiency). The floaters which were struggling initially and melting away are now being purchased by the local fish store on a bi-weekly basis. Pretty soon I'll be able to start playing with fertilizer doses and so forth, still need to reach the volume of plants I need to fertilize the tank as I want to.

The automation of the ferts is my next thing to tackle. So far the Kangaroo feeding pumps I'm picking up for peanuts on eBay are working well but cannot be controlled by my controller... so in the spirit of a fully automated and remotely controllable system, these cannot be a final solution for me, but they are incredibly accurate and cheap on the used market. A couple models do have an RS232 port so perhaps there may be a way to control them, I will have a busy end of year with other things so this is likely going to be dragged out a little.

That's about it for now, the glosso is still filling in but has spread throughout the entire foreground. HC struggled to keep a hold on the Flourite but it's still present in some areas. I have a bunch growing emersed so once the BGA is fully gone I will attempt to plant it again. Have also been adding more fish, trying to build up a nice army of cardinals and ottos. It's actually the first time I see ottos school like this, there's about 20 of them and they all stick together or in two tight groups, very cool! SAE's jumped out... I guess they didn't like it in there

PS. Big open tank = big surprises! So far I have found a football, a pair socks, bouncy balls and the dog's bone in there... oh and a couple Yougioh cards too... Paw prints on the glass may be a hint that the cat may have fallen in there too. Wish the camera was rolling for that!

Cheers
Giancarlo Podio