Fish's new tank project

[untamed]

Originally Posted by Fish

....And the tank is never left long enough without a water change to make a difference. I used one of these pumps to dose a 2gal nano for a couple years and it would take at least two weeks for the water level to creep less than one centimeter either up or down. Because I was usually doing water changes more often than that, it was never anything I had to address....

I've gone both ways and the float switch worked way better for me. I'll offer two ideas that could give you peace of mind.

1) Use two float switches for redundancy. The chances of both switches failing at the same time is pretty remote.
2) Push the water in through VERY low volume irrigation drippers. That way, the system is incapable of delivering water really fast, even if the floats fail. If the float got stuck "on", it would still take 24 hours or more of continuous pumping before the tank level would start to rise.

One question though...When you do a water change, it is only a partial volume change, right? You're not doing a 100% water change. So if your evaporative system has pumped a bit too much water in there, you will have diluted the system and will be running slightly low salinity. If you want to correct this during a water change, you'll have to adjust the salinity of your replacement SW higher to compensate.

[nanopodreefer]

Hey, things looking great had a couple comments, sorry if I missed any of this earlier in the thread.

- how does one get in touch with Nate, where does he work?
- why did you choose to take out the bubble trap in your sump? have you any problems with the bubbles now going over the partition
- I bet at lot of us could appreciate a price breakdown of your setup

Thanks, ohh ya i'm looking forward to another tank video tour someday, hint hint, hehehe

Take care,
Nano

[Fish]

untamed,
Thanks for the info. If I ever had to switch systems to a float, I would put into practice your safety measures. I can't see that happening though.
As I said, I kept a 2gal nano for two years with one of these pumps and my salinity was always rock solid (amazing feat for a nano/pico that size). So far this one has been running for two weeks and all I have observed is the water level in my sump moving just above the line on my sump over night, and just below the line by the end of the day. I attribute this to the on/off cycle of my T5HO lighting. It is only a couple millimeters of drift and the difference in salinity is undetectable via refractometer.
I have not observed a change in evaporation rates from day to day (only the day/night cycle which seems to be self cancelling). The tank is in my basement, and the house is temperature controlled via thermostat.
Perhaps you findings are the result of the type of pump you tried to use for topoff. ???
I stayed away from peristaltic pumps when researching my topoff options because I felt that they were designed to be monitored and checked way more frequently than we usually would do topoffs by hand anyways. Also, the tubing stretches and wears as it pumps which affects the dosing rate. In hospital IV applications the tubing is swapped out so often it is baisically disposable. If you don't mind me asking, what brand of pump were you using?

nanopodreefer,
Nate can be reached via PM to "Nate". He is working for a wholesale company and can get some good prices. Also, as I found with this pump, he goes out of his way to take care of you.

Sorry dude but I'm not ready, emotionally, to add up the cost yet

- Chad

[untamed]

It was a Kangaroo medical peristaltic pump, so maybe it just wasn't consistent enough. I could also have been that evaporation rate in my particular home was more variable.

[Fish]

That's a good point too. I may have been lucky that my nano was in a large government building with air contitionioning too. ???
I bet I would see more fluctuation if my current setup was upstairs in my house where the temperature fluctuates a lot more than it does in the basement.
Thanks for the great input on float switches - I'm sure it is the best way to go in certain applications.
Cheers,

- Chad

[Fish]

Here are a couple zoanthid colonies that I picked up. The photos are under the T5HO actinics. With the daylight bulbs they don't look nearly as nice:









Hope you like,

- Chad

[justinl]

sweet zoos. i gotta get me some o those