280g Inwall

[Delphinus]

Ironically to me the pace has never really slowed or sped up. Every night I do something to the wee hours of the morning. I haven't had a sleep longer than 5 hours in well over a year now except when I've been out of town because I'm up to 2am or 3am every night doing something. It's just that (and you of all folks I'm sure will agree), when you're building a whole basement around the tank there's a CRAP load of other things you need to take care of at the same time. Not all of it may be tank related.

And of course when you end up redoing something because it doesn't work or doesn't meet your expectations, that I guess will slow things down some, but that's a combination of chance, luck, and not able to accurately forecast all potential side effects of a particular idea. And I'd like to think that could happen to anyone once in a while although I'm fairly certain I've had more than my mathematical/statistical fair share than most might, but that's not worth dwelling on.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by michika

Which timers are you using? I want to know what to avoid buying from Rona for the next little while.

Sorry I missed this question before. The timers that were faulty had a very European sounding name, "Uberhaus" or something like that. They were round and kind of ugly but what I liked about them was that the plugs were oriented such that the ground plug was up against the wall so you can put a 3-way splitter on it and run a couple things off the timer.

Rona has a bunch of brands that sound European, they have two others that seem to be the same but branded differently, "Nordik" and I forget the other. I have two Nordik's now and the one Uberhaus that didn't need returning. The Nordiks have two plugs on them already which is nice except that they are one on each side so no matter what you do you end up taking up a lot of space over the wall plugs and end up covering a neighbouring plug. Can't win!

[lobsterboy]

those stiches look ready to come out.

get it going Tony.

[Delphinus]

Heh. Stitches are out, and the first few fish are in. About 14 astrea snails in there so far as well as two moon snails. I've also been stealing Stomatella snails out of the other tanks at night and dropping them into the tank.

MASSIVE diatom bloom happening. Tank looks horrendous.

Still trying to dial in flow. Having a venturi issue with one Wavysea, I tried to DIY a 3/4" inlet barb for it (came second hand and only came with a 1" input which doesn't work for me) - hoping to hear I can get a replacement part but we'll see. Haven't fully committed to keeping the Wavysea's at this point.

Also having some massive doubt about keeping the waveboxes. They literally are doing nothing in this tank. It's not the fault of the waveboxes themselves, the tank just wasn't designed to have waveboxes and the overflow is just too high. The water level sits right at the top of the wavebox. I can only hit the sweet spot if I shut the sump return off. Since I have the diatoms on the rock it's easy to tell if there's any "wave" action. With the sump return on and the other pumps on there is no back and forth, just a slight maybe 1/4" level deviation that alternates between left and right. With the sump return off there is maybe a 1.5" wave and a noticeable back and forth effect. So if the cost of the wave is no sump return I guess that's a no brainer, in that case it might be further ahead to pull them out, dial in the flow with the other Tunzes and recover the space back from the sidewall the waveboxes are sitting at. So there might be some waveboxes put up for sale soon. That's going to hurt, I think I spent $350 apiece for them a couple years ago and the current going rate is considerably less, assuming you can even sell them at all.

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Also having some massive doubt about keeping the waveboxes. They literally are doing nothing in this tank. It's not the fault of the waveboxes themselves, the tank just wasn't designed to have waveboxes and the overflow is just too high. The water level sits right at the top of the wavebox. I can only hit the sweet spot if I shut the sump return off. Since I have the diatoms on the rock it's easy to tell if there's any "wave" action. With the sump return on and the other pumps on there is no back and forth, just a slight maybe 1/4" level deviation that alternates between left and right. With the sump return off there is maybe a 1.5" wave and a noticeable back and forth effect. So if the cost of the wave is no sump return I guess that's a no brainer, in that case it might be further ahead to pull them out, dial in the flow with the other Tunzes and recover the space back from the sidewall the waveboxes are sitting at. So there might be some waveboxes put up for sale soon. That's going to hurt, I think I spent $350 apiece for them a couple years ago and the current going rate is considerably less, assuming you can even sell them at all.

Tony, wait until you get stuff in the tank before you sell them. I think you'll be surprised when the tank has corals etc in it. You may not ever get "the wave" but they'll add some nice movement to the tank and you've already invested your dough in them so there is no point in taking a loss right now, just hold off for a bit.

[lastlight]

Do you see the wave at the surface? I do with mine but the back and forth action you normally see lower in the tank is different. Not really an obvious thing but if you watch particulates in the water you can tell they're moving more erratically. I think you should keep them too. Should at least see a wave on the surface though I'd imagine? In my tank I get a weird flexing of the water. Opposite corners of the tank peak at the same time.

[Delphinus]

If I double the periodicity (is that a word?) then I get the "twisty wave" going with the opposite corners. Guess I can try that and see what happens.

Right now it's really obvious as there is a fair bit of particulate in the water column from the diatom bloom. There is ZERO effect from the waveboxes if the sump return is on, regardless of whether the other Tunzes are on or not. There is a "not bad" wave effect if the rest of the powerheads are off AND the sump return is off. But even then it becomes a "marginal" if the Tunzes are allowed on. There must be too much interference.

I dunno I guess I'll give it a while yet before pulling the plug on them but I still think their days might be numbered. It is a very large area that they take up that maybe a MP40 could sit in instead.

[Skimmerking]

Tony those wave boxes don't under estimate them they do work, however the tuning is the key sometimes it takes like a 1/16th of a turn to get them where you need them.

hold up little grasshopper.

[michika]

As soon as you described the timers I knew exactly what you were talking about. We also had an issue with a couple timers we bought, not for tank purposes, that were faulty.

Now that the tank is essentially set up, how did your electrical set-up work? Did you end up having enough plugs? I'm always so worried about once a set-up is done what happens if you need to expand.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by Skimmer King

Tony those wave boxes don't under estimate them they do work, however the tuning is the key sometimes it takes like a 1/16th of a turn to get them where you need them.

hold up little grasshopper.

Ahhhhhso grasshoppa!

I'm pretty sure the boxes are tuned correctly is the thing. I did it with the rest of the current turned off and I dialed it back and forth around the spot where the waves were the biggest and yeah the slightest little bump on the dial would cause the waves to lessen.

The problem resides with how the water level sits against the boxes when the sump return is on. The waveboxes are as high as they possibly can go, jammed up against the Eurobracing. But the water level is right up to the top of the box so the water in fact spills into the boxes from the top. What ends up happening is that the boxes do not empty and refill like they should when the pumps do their thing. They are just powerheads turning off and on. Without the displacement there is no real wave. There is a slight level deviation at the ends, you can see the water level lap up around the bottom of the Eurobracing.

The problem isn't with the waveboxes but in the way the tank was built - the overflow is too high.

I'll take some pictures and/or video tonight and show you guys what I mean. Maybe it will make more sense when you see what's happening.

Originally Posted by michika

As soon as you described the timers I knew exactly what you were talking about. We also had an issue with a couple timers we bought, not for tank purposes, that were faulty.

Now that the tank is essentially set up, how did your electrical set-up work? Did you end up having enough plugs? I'm always so worried about once a set-up is done what happens if you need to expand.

For the most part it was enough. I have the load split for the 3 tanks now in the basement among 4 circuits and when the other two are offline I may be able to shift things around a bit to load balance even further.

I ended up adding two powerbars in the end: one for the Tunze 6080's (AC, non controllable) although now there is only one of them so I probably don't need that powerbar any more, and then another for the skimmer (two pumps to run the skimmer, it's nice to have a shutoff if need be in case I need to open it up for any reason) and then I tagged the Osmolator, the carbon reactor powerhead, and the zeovit reactor pump off that powerbar since otherwise I'd have needed 3 extension cords to make them reach to the plugs.

I wish I could do without the powerbars since there isn't a powerbar in the world that doesn't seem to say right on it "DO NOT USE FOR AQUARIUMS! YOU IDIOT!" (well maybe I'm paraphrasing a little, but you get the gyst). But I really wanted an easy way to turn the skimmer off and on without pulling plugs out of the wall.

The electrical hookups are a huge messy disaster with plugs and wires everywhere. I wish I could think of a way to tidy it up a bit.