Despite multiple stern looks, my old calcium reactor has yet to clean itself. I decided to finally lift it off the garage floor and bring it to the sink. The reactor in question is a 2-stage Reef Octopus CR140D. I feel like it will be a good reactor, even if it's maybe a bit small. Time will tell. I've never actually run it as a calcium rector. Way back whenever, I purchased it to use as a sulfur denitrator. Which it did quite well at honestly, aside from the various horrible problems that sulfur denitrators have. (like trying to kill my fish)
Of course, problems arose. First, I couldn't find the O-rings that seal the top shut. Well.. that's a problem. Luckily, we have the power of the internet. Turns out there is an amazing website called "The O-Ring Store". And yes, they have O-Rings. What kinds you ask? What sizes? Well, all of them. *ALL* of them. So O-rings are measured by the inside diameter of the ring, and then the diameter of the rubber part of the ring. So I took a pair of calipers to my reactor, measured the inside of the groove and the width of the groove, and found it was about 103mm x 3.5mm. Turns out they have that. They also had a few other sizes right around the same dimensions, so I got 3 sets, just in case I measured wrong. 6 O-rings, $9 with shipping. Ok, that's a win.
Back to the cleaning. So now I'm working on the pump, and it looks like the impeller is siezed up inside the shaft. Sigh. A few hours with vinegar isn't helping here, and when I plug it in, I don't even get a baneful hum, so this pump has had it. Well, no big deal, people sell pumps, right?
Kinda. Turns out Reef Octopus stuff is all crazy metric fittings. So now I'm trying to figure out if I have to scrap all the external plumbing, and buy a bunch of crazy adapters, or if there is some other way. Luckily, Coralvue sells a pump called the Aquatrance 2000, which is a replacement for the OTP-2000 in the reactor. They also luckily sell a conversion kit that makes it all fit together. Apparently there are two versions of the OTP-2000, and I have the one that is replaceable. There is another one, with a smaller diameter output, which if I had, I would be SOL. I place the order, and a little message comes up telling me if I place my order between Dec 29th and 31st, it won't ship until Wed the 26th of Jan. I find this odd, because that is a Sunday, so, I wonder what year that message is from? I hope it's not actually true.. sigh..
Quick check on calendar says 2011. So.. Hrmm.
Well, the calcium reactor is clean now, and it has returned my stern looks with a variety of frustrations. I don't need it right away, but this is still annoying. Hopefully it all works out and I don't have to buy another one.
So let's move on to sump #3, the algae fuge. I have an old 25 Gallon tall, from a failed aquarium many many years ago. That particular loss makes me a little sad, as the topoff fitting came loose, sprayed the autofeeder, which went nuts and dumped it's entire contents into the tank, killing everything. It has sat in the corner ever since. I wanted both the rocks, and the tank from this, so, I got to work pulling the rocks out, throwing them in buckets, and then disassembling the rest of the tank. 4 buckets of rocks in total.
This is the part that got to me a bit, as the rocks I pulled from this tank, were also rocks from my original reef tank nearly 20 years ago. Some of them were dead corals from the crash of that tank (AC failure in Arizona, July), and some of them still had epoxied frag plugs on them. Each little skeleton brought back a memory of that specific coral, and I could remember them like it was yesterday. It was a little bittersweet to be outside blasting them with a hose, remembering them.
I miss those brown sticks from back in 2001. :)
Moving along, I blasted all the rocks clean, and then went ahead and blasted out the tank. It will actually be perfect for the extra sump. I went ahead and ordered a retrofit CPR overflow for it, which I will later silicone in and then drill the back of the tank for an overflow.
Next step was to re-setup my QT tanks. Eons ago I had dreams of a coral farm, so I built this *enormous* shelf. It holds 6 40 gallon breeders, and actually, can hold 2 more on top, but probably needs shallow ones if I were to do something like that. Over the years it became a storage shelf, although I did have 3 breeders sitting on it, so, I cleaned those out, and filled one with saltwater. Threw all the rocks in it so they would cycle, and then tossed on the HOB canister filter I still had for the QT setup. Hrmm, dead. Sigh, ordering a new one, and an impeller, just in case it works. Threw in two random pumps I had lying about instead. (aquasweeps! Anyone remember those?)
I'll have to make up some more salt, and maybe setup a second QT tank, it's not like I have the room for it or anything....
OK, enough wallowing in sorrow for aquariums past. Let's do something useful, or at least pretend to.
First up, I want to throw float switches on the Carlson surge. I want one to go off when the bucket is about to fire, and the other to tell me if it's malfunctioned, and the emergency drain is being used. I built a quick little bracket on my printer, and wired some BRS float switches onto it. Perfect.
While I was at it, I drilled and cut a few holes in the bucket lid, and zip-tied my new Neptune AFS to the lid. Now the AFS is protected from evil saltwater, and it still drops food right into the bucket! Also, the bucket is now covered so it won't damage my walls anymore, and it's a little bit quieter.
Now I just need to hook all this up to my breakout box that I bought like, a billion years ago and never used. The little tiny wire holders on the older Neptune breakout box are really annoying. I would much prefer fork connects. So I rigged up a little connection bus to make adding more switches easy.
Basically fork connects come in from switches, and then I've pre-wired all the end points to the breakout box. I have 2 connections for the grounds, because they all have to go into one connection.
And now it's all mounted up on the tank room wall, ready to go!
A quick check of the Apex, and yes, every time the surge is about to fire, the switch goes to the OPEN state. Now I can write some cool code to make the Tunze Streams change speeds in concert with the Carlson surge, and really get some water moving around!
A virtual outlet like so:
[Bucket]
Set off
fallback off
if switch OPEN then On
defer 0:30 then OFF
This gives me a 30 second window of time around when the surge fires to turn up the pumps on that side of the tank and give it a little extra boom. Should be fun. Also, since I have one that trips if the emergency drain on the surge is ever used, I programmed that one to shut off the feeder pump to the bucket, to avoid any disasters, and tossed it in the email alarm for peace of mind.
So there is still a bit of time left in the day, so now, it's time to throw some safety at the ATO reservoir. I purchased an AquaFX float valve from BRS awhile back, but then realized I had no way to hook it up inside the reservoir. I also wanted to have a float switch in there, to tell me when the water level was too high, just in case the float valve failed. My goal isn't actually to run the water level up to the float valve, it's more that if it ever runs long enough to fill to that point, hopefully the valve will stop it.
Either way now I needed a way to hook it up. 3D printer to the rescue. Took some careful measurements of the 20g tank, and printed out a nice little bracket to hold the two devices. A few hours later, and joy exists!
Now I hook up all the little bits...
And install into the sump!
Another pressing issue, is the Ruby Elite sump. I ran a side-outlet tube from the main drain, over to the entrance to the refugium area of the sump, which is clear on the other side of the sump. This is super problematic, as basically the water never decides to take that path. I "fixed" it by installing a PMUP in there that takes water out before the skimmer, and sends it off into the fuge. Of course now, the fuge is only processing about 100GPH, so this is really not ideal at all.
I started looking at the design of this sump, and something occurred to me. The drain pipe has a neat design where it exits deep into the sump, into a little acrylic ring, this presumably keeps it from blasting everything around with water motion. However, because this pipe is fully submerged, it means the water from the drain has to overcome the static pressure of air in there to actually drive water in. Without a full siphon from the dursos, this will never happen.
Solution: Stop the static pressure!
It's just basic 1" PVC, so I cut up an old fitting I took off the tank at some point, and made a nice slant cut in it. Smoothed the edges with a dremel and sand paper, and installed it. The opening sits about halfway in the waterline, and now, water flows through! Not a ton of water, but some water, and a little more helps. I aimed the opening of the slant at the back corner of the fuge, so if it sprays bubbles (and it does), it does so into the acrylic wall, and not into the open air. Perfect, problem made less problematic.
Finally, to finish off my work today, I finally got around to mounting the last of my Christmas presents. A Dragon Touch 10" tablet. Again, 3D printed some brackets I found on thingiverse, and up it went!
Now I have a nice display, right next to the tank, and can know the parameters at a glance, without even having to go into the fishroom. I'm super happy with this.
So in the end, I guess the day ended on a good note. Got alot done, more projects in the works, and probably solved more problems than I uncovered today, so, a win overall.
Feeling hopeful, I trundle off to bed...