Choff's RSM 650 Build

[Choff]

Everything seems ok. I am closely watching the bits of green that remain in the sandbed (from when I vacuumed and churned up the sand pretty good the algae was all mixed in).

I tested last night and everything was in the normal range, but I am having fits with my hannah phosphate kit. I tested 3x got 0.00, 0.07 , 0.00. Honestly think the .07 was the accurate one so I did a 100G WC. I think I have gone through more salt in the past month than I have in the past 6 months.

Oh..the 150G RO upgrade kit? Unbelievable. Should have bought that a looooong time ago.

I think the root of my cyano outbreak has been my skimmer. I was afraid it was to big and I should have gotten the 2000i instead of the 3000. I just have not been skimming effectively since it has been running. Well, the unit works best in 6 to 6.5" of water. Which is what I calculated it to sit at. What I didn't take into account was the height of the water above the baffle. I calculated it thinking the water would be the exact level of the baffle. Since the baffle is only 4" wide and a lot of water is moving over it the water level is a full inch above the baffle. So I pulled the skimmer stand out and added 1.25" to it. It's only been running for an hour and I can't believe the difference. I'm kind of in shock that an 1" would make that much difference in the skimmer performance. Maybe in most cases it doesn't, but since I am borderline over sized I think I needed the extra inch in the bubble column for the head to break correctly. Don't really know, just kinda shooting from the hip here.

 

[Mrsalt]

Choff what salt are you using?

Also I was always lead to believe that the bigger the skimmer the better. I'm learning something here, as I'm saving up for a vertex 170 at the mo.


Alan

 

[Choff]

IO Reef crystals

Skimmers need a build up of organics to reach a certain point before it pukes it into the cup. The bigger the skimmer the the higher that point is. If you have a very light bio load and a big skimmer you will not produce constant skimmate, but get periodic bursts. If you had a properly sized skimmer on the same tank you would constantly be pulling skimmate out of the tank because the threshold of organics needed to puke would be lower. Overall you would end up with less organics in your water. Now if your skimmer is to small you won't pull enough out fast enough.

My skimmer is rated for 300G light load and 180G heavy load. What kind of confuses me is that my TWV is somewhere near 300G and mt DT is 150G. I wasn't sure if I wanted to rate the skimmer based on TWV or DT volume. TWV has to come into play though because I think the extra water volume would dilute the organics to some degree making it harder for the skimmer to function.

I'm considering vodka dosing for a few reasons. To assist with my nitrate levels, improve skimmer performance and allow me to feed more. Still researching the pros and cons. Nothing I am going to do anytime soon...unless this cyano comes back.

 

[Mdk16]

That's interesting. I wonder if that's part of the problem I'm having with my skimmer as I have a light load of fish and feed sparingly. My water tests perfect on all accounts as a result but the skimmer works in periodic bursts.

 

[jerry26]

I'm considering vodka dosing for a few reasons. To assist with my nitrate levels, improve skimmer performance and allow me to feed more. Still researching the pros and cons. Nothing I am going to do anytime soon...unless this cyano comes back.

why dont you just run bio-pellets?

 

[FishOuttaWater]

Agree. Biopellets have been awesome for us. It's all our favorite lfs uses in his tanks as well. I will never go back to a standard refugium again after using the pellets.

Why waste good vodka??


Matt

 

[Mrsalt]

Some really interesting points here, what seems to be more important than the volumes the skimmer runs is the adjustability of the thing. Mdk is having trouble getting his balanced and mine runs like a dream at the mo, could be more to do with our systems running completely differing bio loads than where the tap is set. I only want he vertex due to it being silent, as the cskim is a bit loud.


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[Choff]

I ran bio pellets for 7 months with excellent results in that I had almost no algae. At the same time the coloration of all my corals seemed to suffer. I think they were to effective. I probably should have been dosing aminos to compensate the ulns that I had.

When I did my sump redesign I wanted to shift from using bio pellets to a large chaeto chamber. I didn't like the constant worry about the issues of high alk when running bio pellets. My alk tends to run high as it is.

And I wouldn't be wasting good vodka, I'd be using the cheap stuff. I'm going to give chaeto only a shot before I do anything. My little ball is growing. Once my chamber fills up I think I should be in good shape. It's close to 50g capacity.

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[Choff]

So here I sweat in my house because when the ac is on and the house is buttoned up my ph plummets. It was 7.71 this morning down from 8.2. Guess it's time to rig up the outside air line to the skimmer. Headed to the store to buy 50' of air hose

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[DianaKay]

So here I sweat in my house because when the ac is on and the house is buttoned up my ph plummets. It was 7.71 this morning down from 8.2. Guess it's time to rig up the outside air line to the skimmer. Headed to the store to buy 50' of air hose

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Interested to know how that works out. Sounds like a long way to suck air in.

 

[jerry26]

I ran bio pellets for 7 months with excellent results in that I had almost no algae. At the same time the coloration of all my corals seemed to suffer. I think they were to effective. I probably should have been dosing aminos to compensate the ulns that I had.

When I did my sump redesign I wanted to shift from using bio pellets to a large chaeto chamber. I didn't like the constant worry about the issues of high alk when running bio pellets. My alk tends to run high as it is.

And I wouldn't be wasting good vodka, I'd be using the cheap stuff. I'm going to give chaeto only a shot before I do anything. My little ball is growing. Once my chamber fills up I think I should be in good shape. It's close to 50g capacity.

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mine is tied into my controller and only runs every other day. havent been doing it for too long yet but i think itll work a little better. i feel like my water is almost too clean when i run it constantly.

oh and i dose aminos already.

 

[FishOuttaWater]

My ph stays between 7.8 and 8. Right now. In sure it's because it's summer. Everything still looks great so I don't worry about it too much.


Matt

 

[Choff]

So I bought 1/2 " pvc that I will run 25' across the stringers in the basement. I bought a fitting that will connect 3/8 line that will run 5' down to the skimmer where I will transition down to the 1/4" inlet.

At some point in the 25' run I will insert a p-trap connected with unions that I will fill with carbon.

On the outside I bought some screen that will cover the intake to keeps bugs out.

Have a bbq to head to, so I'll tackle this tomorrow if I'm not too hung over.

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[Choff]

It was to nice out yesterday to run the line. I'll get to that at some point.

After more reading about vodka dosing I'm going to give it a go except I'll be using vinegar as it seems it has a lower risk of cyano than vodka.

I'm at least a month out from starting this. I am going away back to back long weekends in early Sept (MACNA & Buffalo for the Pats - Bills game).

My plan is to dose using a BRS peristaltic pump with my apex checking for PH and ORP. I ordered an ORP module & probe this morning and I'll need to have my outside skimmer line done to keep my ph in check.

Anyone else carbon dosing? Open to any tips/suggestions.

Thanks!

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[Mrsalt]

I've just been reading up a bit about ultra low nutrient systems, my outsider looking in feel is that it has to be done extremely slowly as it can shock corals very badly. With vodka dosing and bio pearls all the rage at the mo I can't help but think that they might be that little bit too efficient at nutrient removal. I'm slowly trying to raise my phoshate and nitrate a bit as it can be detrimental to have none of it as I currently do. Just a trace of each is enough for the coral zoanthe within the coral to produce much of the corals food.


Alan

 

[Choff]

I agree Alan and I felt the same way when I was using bio pellets. I had zero algae in my tank and my nitrates and phosphates read zero, but my corals were not really growing and the colors seemed off.

I'm also trying to grow a large chaeto chamber so dosing may be counter productive to that as well. I think my initial goal with dosing is just to improve skimmer performance. I don't think I plan on ramping up to the full dose which is to take me into a full ULNS. If I had all SPS I would do it, but I have a lot of lps and softies that like you said benefit low levels of nitrates and phosphates.

I'm a month away from it and I'm curious to see how big my chaeto ball becomes in that time and what effect that has. I may not end up dosing at all by that time.

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[Choff]

A bit of a catastrophe. A divider in my sump cracked. Last night I saw that one side had pulled away from the silicon, but decided to do nothing about it. Came home from work and saw that the pane is now cracked. It's really my own dumb fault. My initial design was thoughtful, but after it had been running for a few weeks I decided to remove a baffle that didn't seem to be doing anything. Now I recall what that baffle was there for. To support the middle glass pane. My sump is a 125G long with 4 chambers. Filter chamber on the left and return chamber on the right. The middle chamber is then split offcenter longways with one section 36"x 12" and the other 36" x 5". The smaller chamber water height is 15" where the large chamber is 21" so pressure on the 36" center pane of glass is not equal. About a 1/3 of the length of the pane there is a cutout and the large section drains into the smaller section. I had 5" baffles in the middle chamber on either end. I foolishly removed both so that it was just silicone joints holding it in place at either end. So first one silicone joint gave way and then that created pressure on the cutout and cracked the glass.

When that makes no sense...look at the picts.


The left side broke free first. The skimmer chamber on the left drains into the smaller raceway. The over baffle is hidden by the skimmer out pipe. I removed an "under" baffle just to the right of the skimmer out pipe that provided support. There was a similar one on the other side that I also removed.



The result the next day was the cracked pane.



The question is now what....

I could just remove the center pane and let the middle chamber be one large chaeto chamber. The issue with this is now all of my flow goes through this chamber. The entire point of the 2 chambers was so I could control flow through the chaeto chamber. Also, I have no filter between the chaeto chamber and the return so I will get lot of cheato bits making it's way into the DT.

Option 2 involves some light plumbing, but swapping the skimmer chamber and the chaeto chamber. This allows me to go back to controlling how much flow goes through the chaeto chamber. The one issue here is my skimmer outflow. I will either have to just dump it right back into the section it's pulling the water from or I could pull out the glass hole saw and cut a hole in the right baffle to vent the skimmer. This has the potential issue of microbubbles though since this will defeat the bubble traps.

Last option. Get another piece of glass and put the sump back to the original config. This would involve taking the sump offline, moving my skimmer into my FT and rigging a return pump from the FT to the DT (bypassing the sump) until the silicone was cured.

Bleh....


And yes, the brown hair algae seems to be growing faster than my Chaeto ball.

 

[Mdk16]

I like the last option. It's the most work but the other two have to many variables that in the long run you will probably opt for the last option anyway.

Why can't you take the current sump offline, temporarily use the RSM sump that came with the system while the silicone cures?

I've read your build, it's not like you're busy and I know you have no other projects scheduled for this weekend! :apint:

 

[Nob35]

That's bad news, if you go with option one I do no think you would have much of a problem. My sump is basically setup that way , all water flows through the refugium. To stop the chaeto from going into the return chamber I made a surface skimmer which works great. I took a piece of acrylic and cut 1/8" slots along it and and mounted it at a 45 degree angle. My LFS loved it and had me make him one for trade. You can see it on the top left corner of this old pic, it had some hair algae on it at the time so should show you how it works.

The only time I have anything come out of the refugium is when I'm doing work in it and very small pieces float loose. Even then it is only the culerpa that will float through and every piece that gets through my tangs eat it as soon as it is in the DT. The chaeto stays in a ball and never gets through.

 

[Mdk16]

Nice idea Nob!