Day 14, Not as planned..

Full tank shot to start it off..


As you can see, this is not a tank full of new aquascape, as was planned for today.  The wife was sick, and attempting to solo the rockwork wasn't realistic, so, it will be put off until next weekend.

I wasn't to be completely undone however..  I decided to fix some problems today.

First problem.  I wanted to unplug something to test it the other day, just one of the pumps.  I walked up to the EB832, and realized, I had no idea which plug was the pump.  I had to trace the stupid cable!  This is absolutely no good.  In an emergency, with water rushing everywhere, I do not have time to trace cables.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FD4V234/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Problem solved. Cable tags.  For every cable.  The problem became even more obvious, as I basically had to trace every single cable just to figure out what was what.  I'm actually still at it, as I have about 10-15 more cables to label.  But it's getting there...

So we come to the second problem.  It's actually a variety of problems, all with what I hope is one solution..

1. On the left sump (the Elite), the water flow through the refugium is pretty lame, and so is the growth over there.
2. Every time I dose vinegar (13ml) to the left side, the pH probe has a spaz.
3. The heaters are having trouble keeping the temperature stable.
4. The two sumps aren't staying at the same level.

This is all caused (I believe) by the COR15 I installed awhile back.  I installed it in the skimmer area of the right sump (where the water comes in from the drain).  It takes that water, pumps it up to the manifold.  From there it goes to carbon, GFO, the sponge bucket, and the surge.  What doesn't go into the surge, then comes back into the right sump in the pump area, so it bypasses the fuge there...

This means that the right side had to have the durso tuned to draw more water than the left side.  I feel that the left side just isn't getting the same flow.  Additionally, a ton of water is just bypassing the fuge.  The right side now gets less water movement, and all kinds of knock-on problems have surfaced.

Solution?  Tap into the crossfeed pipe, and draw from there for the COR15!  As astute readers will remember, to solve my sump imbalance issues, I installed a tube from one sump to the other, to allow water to flow across in case of a single pump shutdown.  All I needed to do, was cut that tube, and hook the COR15 to both ends of the tube, and then badda bing, it draws from both sumps equally!

So a manifold was built.

Now those of you who are astute viewers might notice.. I forgot to put the COR fitting on that pipe before I glued the tube into the flange.  Yes, I had to cut it off and re-do it.

So the idea of this manifold is simple.  Cut the tube that connects the sumps in half, connect each half to the T section. Then the pipe feeds down into the COR.  I used a large pipe here at the T, just so there wouldn't be any bizzare flow artifacts in that section.

The only annoying thing, is that I glued the valve on upside down, so, I couldn't plumb it quite how I wanted to.  Argh.

So, with much pain and grumbling, this whole mess was installed, and the pump relocated...

After fixing 3-4 leaks, it seems to be working as desired.  I've tested shutting the pump off a few times now, and it reacts correctly, and re-starts easily.   So far the flow seems much more even, and I feel like the left side is really moving more water.

It also let me re-adjust the dursos, and now I'm getting actual flow from the drain into the fuge area.  Chaeto growth here I come.

This whole mess took about 4 hours, not counting the 3 x 2 hour dry times for PVC cement screwups..  While I was at it, I also threw back on a flourescent fixture I used to have mounted under the sump, which was used to light the sump up when working down there.  I should have done that months ago.  So much nicer to be able to see what I'm doing..

Staring wistfully at the rocks waiting to go into the tank, I climb into bed..

Day 13, Water Water Everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

So I realize I haven't done a real update in awhile.  Mostly this is due to the end of the holidays, a billion birthday parties, and being horribly sick for a week.  No excuses though, time to catch up on the progress.

But first, Pic of the day from the automated camera!

(yeah, kinda lame still, and that window reflection is annoying)

There are three main projects I've been working on since the last major post.  The first is the water itself.

Now some people might not know this about me, but I'm one of those no-water-change nutters.  I don't believe in water changes unless its absolutely critical.  When I started this reboot however, I did have concerns.  It sat semi-fallow for so long, and well, there was that electrical fire, and I did pull a shattered heater out, so, it's entirely possible the water was full of death.  So I've been running various tests, and trying to fix things, while also being aware that I might just have to suck it up and do an 800g water change...

The first issue is nitrates and phosphates.  A while back, I got a Red Sea kit, and did some tests.  The Phosphates were something like .34, so, that's bad.  The nitrates were off the scale, so probably in the 80's.  My solution for this was chaeto.  I dumped a bunch of Chaeto into the tank, and it's taken off.  I've now harvested about 3 gallons of it (terrible measure, but, umm, you get it). So this is working pretty well, but the nitrates just weren't moving.

So I decided what the heck, there is nothing big in the tank yet, lets try vinegar.  I had tried vodka years ago, but I really didn't have any dosing charts, so I just wung it, and added way too much, and whited out the tank.  But now there are nice little charts, so, I decided to follow one.  So I started dosing about 46ml of vinegar a day to the tank, and slowly ramped up to 52ml.  I also decided to turn the skimmer up just a little bit, to help out.

So day 1, of course the skimmer overflows.  That was fun.  But easy to fix, and I let the experiment run for a few weeks, and did another pair of tests on the N and P.  Phosphates didn't move at all.. still 0.34.  But nitrates were now down to 8ppm (from 80!).  Wow.  That was really fast.  I don't actually believe that number.  Re-tested.  (yes, I actually re-tested a good result!).  Nope.. Still 8.  huh. ok.  Well there are a few possibilities here..

1) The vinegar worked!
2) The chaeto worked!
3) My testing procedure is suspect.

You see, I was using the high range on the nitrate/phosphate test.  So to do so, you add 15ml of RO water to 1ml of sample, and test that.  On all my previous tests, I was kinda lazy, and took RO water from the kitchen RO, but on these, I took RO/DI from the tank feed.  It's possible that I have high nitrates in the kitchen RO water.  I need to actually test that to find out, but it's not a priority just yet.. so.. for now, I'll take the good nitrate reading, and just leave the vinegar dose as-is.

This of course, leaves the main issue, which is, what if the general composition of the water is death?  Luckily, we now have these *amazing* Trition ICP tests, where I can find out if that is the case or not.  So obviously I sent one of those in, and just got the results back a few days ago.  I was kinda terrified to look at them, expecting to find like 7000ppt of lead or something.  Nope.  Almost everything is perfect.  Wow.  Basically the test had the following to say:

1) Salinity is low.  Check.  yeah.  knew that.
2) Calcium is low.  Yep.  Hanna said 288, ICP said 302.  Check.
3) Phosphates are high.  Yep.  Check.
4) Lithium is a little high.  Umm.  Ok.. Whatever.
5) Zero Iodine in the tank.  Ok, fixable.
6) Everything else is pretty much perfect.  Like, all the baddies are zeros perfect. Wow.

So the solution at this point is pretty simple.  Step 1, dump one of the carbon filters out, and replaced it with GFO.  I'll just strip all the P out of the tank, and let it go wild, so if the sandbed is buffering any, it will strip that too.  I'll fix the phosphates later by feeding the tank.  So right now I've got about 2lbs of GFO running on the tank.  Should be fine.  :)

Step 2, fix the Calcium.  So, oddly, my Alkalinity is kinda perfect, so I suspect the coralline algae has just been sucking calcium at a higher rate.  Long term the plan is kalk and CaRx, but I don't have any real uptake right now, so those aren't viable solutions yet.  Easy answer, I'll just dump a bunch of CaCl2 in the tank and spot fix it, then maintain with kalk later.

Step 3, stay the course in fixing the salinity.  I have been unwilling to just hard spike it back up with salt, so I've been slowly raising it by using saltwater for the ATO.  It's gone from about 24 to 31 in the last 2 months, so I'm almost at the goal post now.


So I feel like the water itself is in hand now, and I can start worrying about other problems.  One of those problems is dosing.  I am already sick to death of doing 52ml of vinegar a day, and it was a miracle I kept it up while sick.  So I had to do something to fix this.  I took a multi-pronged approach.

First, I dug around on Amazon, and found that Kamoer makes a 24v peristaltic pump.  Hey, guess what 24v means?  It means I can run it directly off the Apex 24v ports!  So 20 dollars later, I have myself a little pump, and a box of Molex micro v3 connectors (the very ones used on the Apex cords).

So step one was to cram some batteries together, and test this little pump.  I had some 12v batteries lying about, so I managed to cobble together a cheap 24v supply, hooked it to the pump, and it immediately went to work.  A few tests later, and I figured out it does 83ml a minute. and pretty reliably at that.  So this is not really ideal for vinegar, because it means I would have to run it for 37 seconds a day.  Thats too obnoxious to program into the Apex.  But I still feel like this is a useful device, so I'll keep going.

So I find a bit of wire that's long enough, and crimp on the molex pins.  Now right here, is where I tell you, don't do this.  Just buy the Apex cable.  I have a ton of various crimpers and tools for this kind of work, but nowhere among them is a crimper that is designed for pins this tiny.  These pins are microscopic.  It was a nightmare to crimp them onto actual wires.  So either buy the $20 cable, or buy an 80-100$ molex crimp tool.  Either way, about an hour or so later, I had a molex connector attached to my little pump.  Next step was a way to mount it.

I very quickly hacked up a mount in tinkercad and printed it.  I'm not actually very happy with it, but it does the job.  It's basically a hole, with some more holes so you can bolt it on.  It's very grotty, but holds the pump in place.

I gave it a quick test on the Apex, and yes, it works.  Works perfectly, and delivers 83ml a minute, just as advertised.  This is less useful than I was hoping though.  I think I'm going to set it aside, and use it down the road to run the kalk reactor.

Ok, so now we still have a dosing problem.  Lets check the interwebs.  Looks like I can 3D print a doser for a Nema 17 stepper motor pretty easily.  Problem is, then I have to control a Nema 17.  In order to do that, I'm going to need an Arduino, and a few other parts.  Quick calculation from Amazon says, I can get all the parts to build a multi-head dosing pump, for about $30 a head, so, $120 for a 4-head doser run via arduinos.  2 days to print, probably another day to solder it up, and a day or two to write the code to run the whole thing.  Ok, 4 days of work and $120. Sounds like a plan.

Nope.  Screw that.  Turns out a little Jebao 4 head dosing pump is available on Amazon prime for $60.  For the price it would have cost me to make my own, I can just have two of these (one as a backup!).  And less labor.  So guess what I did?

In other realms of ridiculous, I also thought, well, lets go to the container store, and get some little plastic containers to use as dosing containers. They don't need to be magical aquarium containers, I can attach R/O tubing to anything.  Price for 3 decent looking containers from the container store?  About $60-80.  Then add on the fittings, and the labor.  Let's check Amazon.  Yep.  3 x 1.5L dosing reservoir, $55.  Amazon beats DIY again.

So plug the new doser in.  Fill the reservoir with vinegar, run it a few times to calibrate.  Done.  Kinda...  I put the output line for the doser in the sump, right after the skimmer, before the return pump.  So 4 times a day, I put 13ml of vinegar into the water.  And 4 times a day, my Apex pages me the pH is too low, because the probes are right next to that dose input.  Argh.  Going to have to figure out a fix for that eventually..

So this leaves project number 3..  The sponge bucket!

I've been slowly working on this one for awhile now, and this weekend I finally finished it up.

First, the idea:  I'm a big fan of Steve Tyree's books, and I even have signed copies of them.  Total nerd.  Anyhow, one of my beliefs has always been that sponges are what makes tanks long term stable.  Over time, sponges grow in all the little crevices in your rocks, and they all filter the water, and this is why I can get away with not doing water changes for 8 years.  One of Steve's books, talks about setting up an "Environmental Gradient" in a tank.  Now I love the theory of this, but if you look at his diagrams and pictures, the whole thing just looks absurd.  He has shelves and racks of corals sitting over piles of rock in the dark, and curtains, and this is no way to run a giant display tank.  But I still like the idea...

So my modification to this, is a remote bucket, filled with small live rock rubble, and very slow bottom to top flow of water.  The bucket will be completely dark, so no algae to compete with the little sponges, and they can proliferate to their valve's content in there, and make my water all sparkly.

So step 1.  Get a bucket and a 3/4" uniseal.  Measure the height of the sump, and the highest place on the bucket I can place the uniseal.  Build a little wooden box to raise the bucket enough to have the drain at the right height.  Easy.

Step 2.  Drill a hole for a uniseal.  Drilling holes in plastic is a bit of a pain really.  So rather than doing the hole-saw nightmare, I decided, lets try a unibit for a uniseal!  Turns out unibits are these magical devices that are PERFECT for drilling holes in plastic.  It made this perfect, beautiful hole.  No marring, no catching, dead perfect edges, drilled through like butter.  I will always use one of these from now on.

Ok, that part was easy.  Now the plan is to pump water through a fitting in the lid of the bucket, down to the bottom.  So all I need to do is run a tube from the lid down to the bottom.  Except, the bucket will be full of rocks, and sponges, and other fun stuff.  If I ever want to take the lid off, I won't be able to get the tube back in.

Solution, build a little pipe that creates a channel for the tube!  I got a 4-way PVC fitting, and drilled a hole the diameter of 1/2" PVC right through the top of it.  I then assembled the fitting with some short pieces of pipe, and little elbows to stand it up off the bottom of the bucket.  Now I have a little sleeve for my tubing to fit into, making it super easy to remvoe the lid.

Quick test, and oops, the whole thing floats.  Because the pipe is sealed, and the air can't get out from the little elbows.  Easy fix, drill a hole in the 4-way to let the air out.

Now I need to make a little shelf for the rock to sit on.  I get a piece of eggcrate, and slice it up, put a hole in the middle, and perfect.  A nice little rock shelf.  Test fit the whole thing, and everything is wonderful.

Next the lid.  Drill a hole (with a unibit!) in the middle of the lid, and put on a 1/2" bulkhead.  Top of the lid gets an R/O fitting, bottom gets a random fitting I had that happens to be the same diameter as some tubing I have lying about.  Insert a length of tubing, and we have a lid.

Now all that was left, was to run some 3/4" pipe out the uniseal, and back into the sump, and then hook up water from the manifold into the top, and give it a test run.  For the test run, I put some tape on the side of the bucket, and ran a stopwatch as the bucket filled.  I marked the tape as it filled at 1 minute intervals.  Lets see how it did:

3.5 cm per minute.  I feel like this is pretty close to perfect.  Not slow enough to be anaerobic, not fast enough to blast the sponges.

I filled the bucket with some rocks I had been cycling in my QT tank for a month or so, and a few small rubble rocks from the display tank that had some sponges growing on them.  I figure in a few months these will spread, and eventually I'll have a bucket full of sponges and filter feeders.  Hooked everything up, checked for leaks, and poof.  Done!

I checked on the bucket this morning, and noticed that the light over the fuge was shining onto it, and it was getting a little too much light.  I'll probably end up wrapping it in some thick cloth, just to keep the light out.  Seems like a simple enough solution.

I solved alot of water related problems today, so I'm pretty happy.  Now that I know the water in the tank is safe, and the nitrates are down, it means I can start stocking and turning the lights on.  That means the next step is to re-aquascape the tank, and finish filling it with rock.  I'm going to just use dead rock for the rest of the tank, which I have been slowly collecting.  The last shipment should arrive monday.  Now I utterly suck at aquascaping.  Not my thing.  But the wife seems interested in it, and she is more artistic than me, so the plan is for her to draw up some ideas today, and some time next week, we will give it a go.  Once that is done, I can start turning the main lights on, and get the ugly phase going, and throw some CUC in there!

I'm so close to having real life in there I can almost touch it.  Excited about moving rocks around, I shimmy off to bed...

Day 12, Melancholy and Frustration

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...

Day 11.5, Holy uMol's Batman!

So just a brief update today, mostly because something surprised me.

I decided after the previous light test, that I was worried the lens rings I printed were putting the light out at too narrow of a beam.  The easy remedy, would be to print one more, without the focusing ring, and see how it compared to the other light.  5 hours later, I had the new ring, and the light went up on the tank.

You can see how one of the lenses is fully showing, and the other has the little V ring around it.  Both are just opaque white PETG plastic.  Nothing fancy here.

So I got out my trust Apogee meter, and set the lights to 45% ( 83 Watts ).  Placed the probe right under the original one, with the focus ring, and got a quick reading of 497 or so.  Ok, cool.  Lets put it under the other one.  Will probably be around 300ish, wait, what?  179.  Seriously?  179?  Oh I must still have this light set at 15%, hrmm, nope, 45%.  Maybe this ballast is flaky, swap cables, nope, still 179.  Nope.  That's the difference of the ring.  Slightly less spread to the light, and a doubling of PAR.  And it's true more or less at all the different positions.  Just better PAR.  I suspect less is flying off into the walls and whatnot.  But it's totally crazy.  I thought the rings would just give me an extra 5% or something, but this is truly nuts.  You can even see it in the tank.

Focusing ring is on the left in this photo.  The difference is visually astounding.

So I pulled the new ring off, and went ahead and assembled the rest of the lights with the focus rings that I originally printed, hung them all up, and gave a quick 45% power test:

This was taken at night, so the solar tubes aren't helping at all here.  They are kind of positioned where the dark areas of the tank on the sides and middle are.  I might still need some smaller supplemental lights, or maybe a light bar across the rear, but we will see.

Quick readings around the tank (still at 45% here) give me about 200ish PAR on the rocks, 70 or so on the sandbed.  I can live with this for now.

Also did another quick nitrate and phosphate test this morning.  Still too high.  That Chaeto needs to get to work.  Or I need to get to work and get the third fuge online.

Dreaming of Christmas Wrasses and Peppermint Angels, off to bed I go!

Day 11, Measure twice solder 4 times?

So today a bunch of little tiny parts came in, mostly to do with the lights, and I was off to the races. It was time to finish one of them up, and mount it up above the tank for a test run.  I'm probably a month or so away from actually turning them on, but I want to be sure this will work, so, time to drill some holes.

The top end of the sink has some nice M5 holes for mounting a ballast, or other nonsense to, but I'm going to steal that, and instead mount a stainless steel plate 2.5" in diameter I got off Amazon.  So I took the plate, drilled a bunch of holes in it, got some stainless steel mounting hardware, and some small ABS spacers, and made myself little hangers.

Once the hangers were complete, it was time to mount the LED's to the sink, and bolt it all together.  I got some 50mm M3 screws, and used them to mount the light rings I 3d printed, and used the lens assembly and light right to basically mount the LED to the sink.  Time to give it a quick test at about 12% power on the floor.

Now speaking of power, I overdid things when I got my ballasts. I didn't quite understand how the Chinese rate LED's, so I got ballasts that were a bit more powerful than I think I'm comfortable running these days.  My ballasts are 185 watts.  I think realistically these are 133W chips, maybe less, but they run well at 140w, so, lets say 133.  So 12% power is really 22W, which is pretty significant.  They lit right up, no noticable heat at all.

Now was the time to bolt the hardware (stainless steel again) to the hangers I put in the ceiling, and start hanging a light!  I used 1 1/4" washers on the top, and one of those little nuts with the nylon inside that grips the thread better.  This should hold a small anvil, so I think I'm good here.

I experimented with various hooks, D rings, and other fiddly bits, but eventually went back to the rope hangers I purchased specifically for this.  They were approximately the right length, and the slight adjustability was just about right.

I carefully set the Apex to 15% power, and plugged the ballast in, and...

Woo.  I can has light.  Lets see how it looks from the front of the tank, and slowly ramp it up.

This is 15%, or 28 watts.

Lets try 30%, (55 watts)

Ok, ok, working so far, lets get crazy and go 50%, 92.5 Watts.

Ooh.. I'm liking it.  It's starting to look like it used to. The lights aren't quite as blue as the photos seem to make them, but they are a nice bluish white, which makes me happy.  I'm getting about 300 PAR here through the rather dirty acrylic top brace that is directly under this light, and about 1" under water.  Heat sink is measuring about 95' F, and a temp probe put directly on the chip is about the same..

Lets try 65% (120 Watts!)

Wooo.  Liking this.  About 400 PAR 1" under water (dirty brace still).  Now the sink is reading about 113 F, and about 117.5F at the chip.  These chips are generally happy under 60' C, and 117 is about 47.5 C, so, I'm still good here.

The sinks are *really* good.  Like some of the best I've ever worked with in my life.  If I take a measurement inside the sink, right above the chip, I get about 113'.  If I move all the way to the top, and take a measurement inside the sink (on the central heat tube core again), it's like 112.5.  That means the sink is wicking the heat up the full length of the sink, and not just dissapating it all at the bottom.  This is exactly what you want these things to do.  These are well worth the $104 each I paid for them.

At this point, I get a little nervous, and decide to crank them back down to 60%.  (111W).  Very little output difference really, but the heat drops to a steady 116' F at the chip.  Just out of curiosity, I decide I should measure the heat on my 20W passive cooled chips over my softy tank.  Those chips have been running every day for like 6 years now.  147'F.  Wow.  Just wow.  Didn't realize they were running that hot.  Either way, I think I like 60% power for now, so I decide I'll let it run for about 3 hours just to be sure it's stable.

The lens holders I printed have some V shaped sides on them, which you can see in a few of the photos.  These reflect the light downwards a bit more than just the lenses.  In fact, they do such a good job, that the light doesn't quite reach the front glass.  I am unsure how happy I am with this tight of a beam.  I'll probably have to try it out with all 4 at full running power (which will likely be 60-65%, even though I used to run them at 75%) and see how I like the effect.  I also need to get some PAR numbers with all 4 running, but that will be saved for another day.

In the meantime, back to work on the other 3 lights.  I cut some leads, this time using 16 AWG wire, instead of 12 AWG, as I just don't need that kind of current handling for the short leads, and they interfere with the lenses a bit.  I twist the wire up, and solder up the last 3 LEDs.  Now to make the rest of the mounting brackets, and assemble everyone!

I won't go into the full details of the build right now, I'll probably save that for an article.  However, because I'm re-using some components from the previous failball, I need to do some cleanup here.  The lenses are covered in salt (2 of them from falling into the aquarium), dirt, and 2-3 layers of failed glue.  Need to clean all that off, and get the lenses all sparkly clean on the inside before I mount them up.

Also, because I am not exactly Hackaday material with my soldering skills, I had to dremel out a bit of the bottom of each reflector, so the solder joint wouldn't interfere with the lens fitting.

Two of the lights I recently purchased are 50/50 lights instead of the 60/40 blue/white I ran before.  Seems the 60/40's are harder to get now, though I did find a line on them in case I need more.  But mostly I'm hoping these 50/50's are good enough.  The wiring on them does seem different though, so I'm a little unsure as to how they are wired internally.  Normally I would snip off the outer tabs on the LED's, but in this case, I'm a bit nervous that they are integral, so I'll be leaving them on the new ones.  I'll have to try them out tomorrow or something, and see how the light compares..

I'll leave you with a fun picture I took right before shutting the system off after the 3 hour test.  The lights at 1%, or 1.85 Watts.

Exhausted from hours of holding a temperature probe in a little hole, I shuffle off to bed..