After a long hiatus of barely making any progress, I'm back at it again.
In the meantime, some minor problems cropped up. The first one being, I think the membrane on the RO died at some point, as I have *alot* of cyano in the tank. Originally I wasn't sure what was going on, and just kind of siphoned it out a little, and assumed it was a cycle. But then my other tank, my 125 softy tank, started having the exact same problem. Now, these tanks are on separate RO's, separate buildings, and the softy tank, well, it has no fish, and nothing new has gone into that tank in years, so, for it to suddenly sprout a cyano issue is odd. Even more odd, that tank suddenly started regrowing razor caulerpa that hasn't been in there for over 15 years.
Sudden cyano, ancient caulerpa resurrection, that tells me something is off with the feed water. On the big tank, I decided to replace the DI resin, which was out sooner than it should have been. 3 days later, it was used up again. Yep, that membrane has had it, and the one on the other tank is slightly older even than that.
So, step 1, start running vinegar again. Step 2, full replacement of the membrane and all the filters on both RO's. While I was at it, I added another stage to the RO, a second carbon block, just for sanity's sake. I also wasn't super happy with how the RO was mounted to the drywall. The screws were a little loose, and when you cranked on it with the filter wrench you had a terror that it was going to rip off the wall.
So I took the RO down, and mounted a board on the wall:
Then, I added back the unit, and the new extra carbon block filter:
And after a few days of running both the new water, and the vinegar, the cyano is slowly receding. Whatever was in the water (likely nitrates, my tap water has nitrates) was just obnoxious. Now I just need to up the algae harvest, and get things back on track.
Next on the list is the filthy obnoxious filter socks. This tank just grinds socks like there is a sale on them. Swap a sock in, 2 days later it's brown and overflowing. I just cannot keep up with a 2 day replacement cycle and constant cleaning of them. It's too much. Sadly, these sumps are not ideal for a rollermat, but I'm determined to do something anyhow, so I ordered a Clarisea SK-3000.
There is room on the right sump for this, for the left, definitely not without use of a saw... which.. I'll probably do.. because hate socks. I assembled the SK-3000, and crammed it into the sump. I ended up re-routing one of the overflows from the split into it, and the other I just took the sock off. Even some filtration is better than what I've had, which is just dirty socks that need to be laundered and replaced more often than I actually do.
I actually ended up flipping it around to the right side of the sump, and modifying the inlet a bit. I also found that it wasn't getting enough of the flow, because if the flow was backed up, instead it would choose to use the alternate path rather than raising the level and triggering the motor. So obnoxious. So now I have a restriction on the non-Clarisea path, and will test that for a few days to see if that helps or not. The return plumbing of this tank is just way too complex.
But I said moonlight. And you heard me say it, and this whole time you've been reading and saying "none of this sock nonsense has anything to do with the phase of the moon!" Right you are.
I recently posted an article on how to make one of these bad boys. Moonlight for a Neptune Apex controlled Aquarium. Previously, I had a hackjob of moonlight.
My setup was 5 10W LED's, with an 80 watt driver (80, because bad decision dinosaur). With the Apex, I couldn't actually do lunar phase, so I rigged one where the lunar phase was over the course of 1 week. It was hackish and I hated it. The new controller toy I built would let me do true lunar phase, with proper time and everything controlled entirely by the Apex. The problem was, that 80W driver was too powerful. If I limited the power going to the driver, it basically cut down the resolution of the moon transition when it went from 0-100%, and that annoyed me. Alot. So to fix this, I replaced it with a 40W driver. This means my 10W LED's now get a maximum of about 8W or so at 100%, which is actually more than enough for the moonlighting.
With that in mind, I programmed the serial port Blue channel on one of my VDM's, to provide the fake moonrise/moonset ramp that the ESPLunar requires, and boom, everything worked perfectly.
Now by using the "If Moon" statement in the Apex, to run the outlet, and a few "If Moon" statements hooked to profiles on the VDM, I have really accurate moonlight on this aquarium. The rise and set is at the right time, the maximum power is the right percentage for the phase of the moon, and I have a true 29.5 day cycle! I expect a written thank you note from all my fish now.
I think going forward, I have some major changes to make. I want to redo the plumbing of the return lines. They just have far too much restriction, and I'm only getting about 500gph per side out of the COR20's. That's obnoxious. I've ordered some 2" and 1.5" pipe from BRS, which hopefully arrives before this weekend, and I might spend a few hours doing a return plumbing replacement. Hopefully this also gives me more room to move around under the stand, and with that, maybe I can figure out how to jam another Clarisea in the left sump. With more room down there, I might be able to rethink some of the overflow plumbing, and potentially convert to a modified bean animal, maybe, not sure about that.
My fish population has ebbed and flowed. The Anthias were a bad idea, but I knew that. The current population is as follows:
- 1 Ruby Longfin Fairy Wrasse
- 9 Bar gobies
- 1 Scissortail dartfish
- 1 Foxface Rabbit
- 1 Copperband Butterfly
- 1 Purple firefish
- 1 Banggai cardinal
- 4 pajama carninals
The copperband was an amazing addition. He has wiped out the aipstasia completely, and has actually transitioned to eating frozen food with everyone else. The foxface is big and healthy, and I'm super happy with the bar gobies. Once the last of the cyano is wiped out, I'll be back to the LFS for more fish.
And now, dreaming of a shipment of pipe fittings and analog to digital voltage converters, I rest my weary head...