Jacob’s Blog

Recapping…

This is more of an afterthought to my Herbie Overflow post than anything else. I’d like to recap a couple of points…

• Murphy’s law is always working against you. Eventually a snail, fish, or some algae is going to restrict or completely block your overflow standpipe.
• Having multiple standpipes reduces the chance of flooding due to a blocked pipe.

Use of standpipes is popular because they raise the water level in the overflow box and quiet down the waterfall effect. The higher the pipe the less waterfall. For many of us, myself included, this means that the air inlet on your standpipe (most designs utilize an air inlet) is above the rim of the aquarium. This is fine, however it eliminates an intrinsic safety mechanism of the standpipe.

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Air Exchange Installation
I finally dragged myself back under the house to run the exhaust duct for the air exchange system. The crawl space is not a nice place to work in. Prior to running the exhaust duct I had been running the air exchange for about a week. I have some PVC pipe in the area of the fan as well as some other odds and ends from the project, all of this stuff was covered in condensation. I’m glad I decided to run the exhaust vent when I did! So I ran about 25 feet of flexible ducting to the nearest crawl space vent where the moisture laden air is vented out of the house. My tank temperature is steady at 79.5 degrees F with all lights and pumps running.

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I was among a few people in the US to be the first to receive one of the new Tunze Master DOC skimmers. Mine is a 9420. It took me about a year to actually unbox it, get it wet, and run it. Around that time a few other people had theirs up and running and had realized that there were some performance issues with the pump drawing less air than specified and the skimmate barely making it up and over the neck.

Tunze first released a new pump, designed and manufactured by them, the Hydrofoamer Silence pump. There are a couple of sizes available depending on which skimmer it is slated for, the 9420.040 or the 9410.040. Roger of Tunze USA was kind enough to upgrade my original pump to the new Silence pump since I had never run it. More recently Roger sent me a new needlewheel which is said to improve the air intake.

I just installed the new needlewheel today and have fired the skimmer back up. I haven’t measured anything yet so I don’t know if I’ll see an actual improvement or not, but I can’t imagine Tunze would redesign the impeller for no good reason. I snapped a few pictures in the process of replacing the impeller.

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Lighting Installed

It seemed like the day would never get here… but finally I have my lights running. Although I won’t use them until my air exchange system is completely running I do have pictures to prove their existence to all of my non-believer buddies! I would have liked to have these up and running about 4 months ago but a few design changes and minor set backs held me up.

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Herbie Overflow
Funny name for a nifty idea. A guy by the name of Herbie came up with this, not that it’s an earth shattering idea but he was the first to document it and become recognized for the idea. Today I completed the addition of a Herbie Overflow to Project 360. Before I get into the install, let’s look review why we use standpipes and look at a few different standpipe/overflow designs.

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Yes we do!

Anyone remember this fan from a post long ago?…

The air exchange is now hooked up under the house. I pulled the electrical run for it (good to have some cable in my conduit finally), wired up the fan, and connected it to the ducting going to the tank as well as the ducting to the foundation vent (don’t want all that warm moist air under the floor boards). We fired it up and it blows… in a good way of course. The duct noise is not too bad, sounds about like the A/C running in the house. The final tie-in to the canopy is yet to be done. On that note I should probably mention that I may scrap the canopy that I built! Wouldn’t you know it - another idea came to me in the shower recently. Stay tuned!

As I was explaining to my friends on Reef Central recently, I ran into my first technical problem with the plumbing. My divert valve is leaking at the seat. This means that most of the flow from my return pump is making it back to the tank, however a small trickle is being lost via the auto-water change drain line! I discovered this while working under the house to complete the air exchange system (more on that later). Since I had not tied in the auto-water change drain line to the house drain it was dripping to the ground. I noticed recently that I had been replacing more and more evap. water… which didn’t make sense due to the damp weather. Well now I know why, it wasn’t evaporation it was saltwater being lost!!

This is the valve that I have now, which has either gone bad or has been bad from the start. It’s a Chemtrol-Nibco model S51D2-E

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Not much new to say for the month of February. Between being sick for a week, all of the rain, and what little work I’ve had there hasn’t been any significant progress on the tank.

I am hoping to complete construction of the canopy before month end, and then will need to prime/seal it. After kicking around several ideas for raising and lowering the canopy by power I finally settled on a simple block and tackle style pulley system and gear motor. One consideration is how quickly I want to raise and lower the canopy; ideally 20 seconds seems good. The great thing about adding pulleys is the torque on the motor can be reduced by reducing the tension in the cable, but as I have realized overall motor horsepower stays the same and tends to govern the design. Here is why:

Pulleys trade force for distance. The work done will always be the same regardless the number of pulleys used; more pulleys just means more cable to be reeled in. For a given design, the more pulleys, the more cable to reel in, and if the time to raise/lower does not change with the number of pulleys, then the RATE of work stays the same, hence the motor power does not change… So I am currently looking for the ideal gearmotor and working towards finalizing the design. I’m hoping to have everything installed by mid March… check back soon!

Jacob.

To recap the plumbing on Project 360 there are essentially 2 systems:

1) The in-house plumbing. This consists of the piping between the display tank and sump as well as the piping, electrical conduit, and ducting through the walls and into the crawlspace. This is part of Phase I (see below) and is now complete.

2) The water room plumbing. This consists of the piping between the water storage tanks, dosing system, auto top off system, and the display tank. This is part of Phase II and is partially complete.

In case I have not mentioned it already I have split the project into 2 phases as well. Phase I - get the tank up and running under manual control, and Phase II - integrate the automation components. Below are some photos along with descriptions of the Phase I plumbing.

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After taking heat from just about everyone in our local reef club for the good part of the last year I’m happy to announce I finally have water in the tank! I started filling the tank with RO/DI water on Christmas day. My goal was to start filling on the 20th… so really I’m not that far behind schedule [wink]!

Here’s the last look ai it while dry

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