Stone's 225 Carbonate Factory

[Stones]

Originally Posted by lockrookie

That sux bud you do know I'm only a phone call away if you need a tank sitter. I am glad you fought it in time

Thanks Jeff, I may take you up on the offer in due time. However, you may need firefighting experience as a pre-requisite for the job

[lockrookie]

If it helps I have two huge extinguishers I can bring with me

[Stones]

Originally Posted by lockrookie

If it helps I have two huge extinguishers I can bring with me

Well you certainly meet all the credentials now!

[lockrookie]

Lol well I hope you at least had a good vacation.

[Stones]

So I got in on a few black friday bargains from an American retailer and decided to get myself a much needed christmas present.





And why, may you ask, is this a much needed item? See exhibit A below:











I work out of town for ~24+ days a month and when I'm home I typically don't have enough time to do all of the maintenance I'd like to on my reef tank. Combine this with the fact that it's a real PITA to remove my skimmer cup from my very cramped sump and you have a formula for a very gross and poorly performing skimmer.

Here are the pics of the Vectra installed on my Alpha 250 cone skimmer:





And here is the collection cup after only running for 5 days with the neck cleaner installed:



Since I've had the Vectra installed for ~3 weeks now, I can say that this was definatley a worthwhile investment. I purchased this product primarily to cut down the amount of maintenance required and didn't really expect to see that much of a difference in the performance of the skimmer. However I was pleasantly surprised by how much more skimmate I'm now getting with the Vectra in place. I'd estimate that I'm now producing 20 - 30% more skimmate per week than I was prior to installing the Vectra.

Currently I have the Vectra running at 1 minute intervals twice per day and that seems to be doing the trick although I may add in a 3rd or 4th interval as well to see if it makes any difference on skimmate production.

I did shoot a short video of the Vectra in action but since I'm on satellite internet out at work, I wasn't able to upload the video (I'll try to get it uploaded on my next shift at home).

What I wanted to illustrate with the video was how the Vectra has basically no effect on the foam head inside of the skimmer body when it's operating. I had expected the foam head to collapse similar to when I add food or work with my bare hands in the aquarium. This is not the case. Directly behind the wiper blade, larger bubbles end up forming as the blade wipes the skimmer neck clean and then seconds later they are replaced by the same small to micro sized bubbles that are more typical of a needlwheel driven skimmer.

As with every Vertex product I've ever owned, build quality on this unit screams qualilty. Packaging was very modern and effective at protecting the unit from damage while in transit. My only complaint with this unit is that it does not have an integrated timer and I had to go out and drop another $15 on a digital timer in order to get this unit up and running. This is a very common complaint on this unit and the folks over at Vertex say they left out an integrated timer purposely so that hobbyists could integrate the Vectra more easily with their reef controllers.

I personally do not own a reef controller and even if I did, I'd rather this unit have its own integrated timer anyway so that I wouldn't have to waste one of the precious few outlets on the power bars for the Vectra.

Either way, this is the only shortcoming that the Vectra has IMO and this seems very minor in comparison to the solid build quality and benefits of running the Vectra.

[lastlight]

"I have a mind-blowing SPS tank which I usually don't have enough time to perform general maintenance on".

You sir... suck

[Stones]

Originally Posted by lastlight

"I have a mind-blowing SPS tank which I usually don't have enough time to perform general maintenance on".

You sir... suck

I always look forward to your posts Brett

The mind-blowingness of the system however, is sadly at an all time low right now. Hopefully I can get everything back on track here within the next few months with some diligent water changes as well as a few other measures I'm taking to test their claimed effectiveness.

Luckily I didn't lose too many pieces from the pseudo-crash and just need to get them to color back up to their full potential. Most of the pieces I did lose are also replaceable as I had given frags to the only other hard core SPS addict in southern Saskatchistan.

[Delphinus]

Did you compare the Vectra against the Avast unit at all? I'm curious, I'd like to try one someday as well and the two seem similarly priced.

One idea I had if I ever get ambitious and energetic enough was to put a cleaner head on my skimmer and see if I could also attach a mist nozzle attached to a pump on the RO/DI reservoir doing the top up. Get a wipe AND a spray-down kind of thing .. but maybe the squeegee does a good enough job on its own?

[Stones]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Did you compare the Vectra against the Avast unit at all? I'm curious, I'd like to try one someday as well and the two seem similarly priced.

One idea I had if I ever get ambitious and energetic enough was to put a cleaner head on my skimmer and see if I could also attach a mist nozzle attached to a pump on the RO/DI reservoir doing the top up. Get a wipe AND a spray-down kind of thing .. but maybe the squeegee does a good enough job on its own?

I didn't really look into the Avast unit Tony but I did know that they made a similar product. I've been quite happy with every Vertex product I've owned so I didn't have 2nd thoughts on pulling the trigger on this purchase come black friday.

Thats a pretty slick idea using a spray nozzle and pump to help aid the cleaning process. When I first heard of these neck cleaners, I assumed they would have had hardware in place to do just what you described so I was a bit dissapointed that they were simply a motorized squeegee.

The trick to pulling off such a design would be running the hose to the spray nozzle if it were mounted on the wiper blade arm. You'd have to figure out how to get around the hose getting wrapped up as the wiper arm rotates. You could just mount the spray nozzle protruding just below the inner lid of collection cup so that it sprays the entire skimmer neck I guess but this wouldn't be as effective.

However, I'm not sure that a spray down would be necessary or even help the cleaning process at all. It seems the foam head inside of the skimmer neck keeps the surface of the neck continuously wet. When the wiper blade makes its rounds, it removes most of the grime on the surface and after each pass, the rising foam column cleans off any loosened gunk that the wiper blade may have missed. If the foam head were to collapse shortly after the wiper blade started moving, then I could definately see a mist of freshwater aiding the cleaning process but this is not the case.

I'm also running the wiper blade for 1 minute intervals twice a day so the wiper blade goes around 6 or 7 times per cycle. After each run cycle, the skimmer neck appears just as clean as if I had gone over it with a scrubber so I'm happy enough with how this unit performs without the use of an added fresh water mist.

[lastlight]

I'm not sure it's made anymore but the AquaDriver units had water nozzles:

http://reefbuilders.com/2009/07/31/a...m-custom-nice/

They also cost as much as the skimmer lol.