The inwall 380 starfire reborn

[Sparkss]

Originally posted by Sparkss
Those last couple of pictures were taken w/ our old canon powershot camera (w/ builtin lens). I don't recall the model # but it is approx 3+ yrs old. A lot of the tank shots and what not were taken w/ a canon 30D w/ a 100mm fixed focal point lens. I forget the model # for that also, but it is a "fast" lens, helping us to avoid using the flash.

I was wrong about the lens we use on the 30D, it is a 50mm fixed lens.. sorry

No real pictures of the new fish. The 4 Dispars are out and about (and keeping together), but they have separated from the Bartlett herd for now. Hopefully they will reintegrate back into that school. I will say that the Dispars are beautiful fish, hopefully they will survive and prosper in our tank

Out of the 4 flame wrasses I have only seen 2, and only 1 at a time. I am pretty sure they were 2 different flames that I saw because of some size differences, but it could have been a trick of the tank's depth playing tricks on my eyes ? Of the 2 potters leopards I had only seen 1 on Saturday (the day after introduciton), and not again since. It swam right by the ornate and was more or less completely ignored (thankfully). I also realized that the ornate is a huge fish now. I will try to get a ruler to get a measurement. The realization hit me when I saw the ornate swimming alongside the rabbitfish and noticed that they were almsot the same length and about the same "thickness".

Once we get a few more of the new fish swimming around in the open I will be taking more picrtures

So far the tank's water has been pretty clear, clearer than it was for the last 6 months, so something in our filtration must be working right (can we say "Volcano Skimmer" ? ).

I received an Email from IceCap Service stating that the Vortec wet end parts were going our USPS today *Woohoo !*. But over the weekend one of our previously well behaved (read quiet) pumps started misbehaving. It is not rattling like something metal is loose. Once the parts get here and I fix up the other 2 I will focus back on the previousloy quiet 2 to see just how "queit" and well behaved they really are.

[Sparkss]

Time for a short update. No pictures since the only fish I have seen swimming out and about are the Dispars. I guess I will try to get a couple of shots of them, but I am really wanting to see the flames come out. I know where 2 of them are, and can check on them from the back of the tank, but have no idea about the other 2. The other flame wrasse that we had was out and swimming within a day. I am quite concerned that these are still hiding almost a full week later now. I have not seen the potters since the day after their introduction. I am thinking of putting a temporary sand bed (in a big bowl, or make a "sand box" out of acrylic) into our fuge/sump and putting the potters directly into there if we ever try again (if the current ones don't make an appearance).

As most in our area know, it has been quite cold lately. We have 3 Theo 400W heaters running off of our controller (they come on at staged temperature intervals). Lately all 3 have been on day and night. I did some quick checking and calculating of how much it is costing us to heat our tank. During that investigation I came across something interesting with our heaters. I put each on individually on the Kill-o-watt meter to see what their wattage draw was. I noticed that when first turned on they started at a certain wattage draw and then over time their power consumption decreased. I let each one run for about a minute or so and when it seemed like the numbers had levelled off I wrote them down. All of them ran at approx 119 v with a PF (power factor) of 1.00 (what I would expect of a resistant heater load). Here are the wattage numbers for our 3 Theo heaters :

208
217
220

Not really what I would have expected from 400W heaters.....

With those numbers @ 24 hours usage (and tier 3 rates) I calculated that we are spending approx $200 a month to heat our tank. *uugghh*.

[jnarowe]

Amzing Tom...have you written to Theo and asked them about that?

[spazz]

you need to work on a gas fired heat exchanger we were talking about??? with that much money going to heat your tank you need alot better heating system. you can pay for a heating system fired by gas for alot less than it would cost for electric.

[tomasz]

Originally posted by spazz
you need to work on a gas fired heat exchanger we were talking about??? with that much money going to heat your tank you need alot better heating system. you can pay for a heating system fired by gas for alot less than it would cost for electric.

Scott, that sounds like good idea. Do you have any links to system like this?

[Sparkss]

Jonathan
No, not yet... but that does sound like a good next step

Scott
Yes, we are looking at some of the options that you and I had discussed earlier this year. Right now we are more focusing on the initial design idea that myself and a fellow reefer came up with last year (but never pulled the trigger on).

Tomasz
Me and another reefer out here have already sourced parts to build one ourselves. Tankless heater/boiler, 300’ PEX (to spool in the sump) and a radiant heat rated circulation pump come out to just about $800. After shipping, fittings and other incidentals we expect the whole unit to run around $1k. Just have not pulled the trigger on it yet. Scott has some great ideas on building a titanium heat exchanger and utilizing similar other components (tankless heater, circulation pump, etc). Since we and the other reefer both have huge sumps, we planned to just coil a couple hundred feet of PEX into our sump and run a radiant loop through the tankless heater/boiler, similar to how radiant floor heaters work. Up in your neck of the wood I Would expect whole house boilers to be common place. All you would need to do is add another zone to an existing boiler and setup the controls and you are done (for alot cheaper than we could here).

[jnarowe]

titanium heat exchanger would be significantly more efficient than PEX.

[Sparkss]

but the PEX is easier and cheaper to implement, since we both have the room in our sumps to implement it. And using the PEX also means fewer fittings, etc. Don't forget that PEX is used for in floor radiant heating and also for potable water in some housing constructions, so it seems to have all of the properties to make it perfect for this application.

But heating has taken a bit of a back seat this week. We have been having a bear of a time with Eco Tech in trying to get our Vortec wet ends serviced under warranty. They sent out a new bear and drive shaft set for our first 2 pumps, but now it seems like they are stalling on sending them out for our other 2. Plus the new bearing and drive shaft are different from the old ones such that the bearing is not a "perfect fit" for our old wet frame. They included a spare wet frame in case one of ours was cracked, so I was able to employ it to fully "rebuild" one of our wet ends, but the other had to reuse our old wet frame. The main isse being that the new bearings are not so much "press fit" into the wet frame as the old ones were (they relied on a tight fit and friction to prevent the bearing from rotating within the wet frame). The new bearings have 2 notches in them that fit onto ridges within the new wet frames to prevent them from spinning. So I have 2 choices (according to ETM) :

1. Let the bearing potentially spin in the wet frame (which in my estimation will lead to premature failure and required replacement of the wet frame)
2. Or, recommended by ETM Service : Put a couple of drops of super glue on the bearing to glue it to the wet frame (which I am not sure the bonding properties of the glue for that application, but if it in essence makes the bearing a permanent part of the wet frame, then again I would need to purchase a new wet frame once the bearing required placing again... in about 11 months).

Now I could be wrong about the super glue, but I tend to dislike such solutions on principle. And I hate only having options that ont he surface appear to be designed to get me to spend even more money just to operate a product that I have already paid for.

Then of course the other solution was for me to send in my wet ends for them to rebuild and send them back. Couple caveats to that.. not the least of which being the holiday season and shipping times being elongated quite a bit. Of course they offerred to sell me a couple of wet ends to use while they had ours in for service, but that is just not in our Holiday budget (and shouldn't have to be).

I even offerred to pay for the repair parts, since they seemed reluctant to send them to us, and they are only a couple of $$. Warranty or no, I just want to get our pumps back fully operational and for gosh sakes quiet again. We have less than a month now left on our warranty and if I didn't know better I would swear that we were being played along until that warranty ran out.

I will say that the parts that they did send have done wonders for the 2 wet ends that I used them to rebuild (even with the bearing possibly spinning in the wet frame for now). Hopefully we will have enough parts to make it s Silent Night this Christmas Eve !!!!!!

[jnarowe]

Eco-Tech's solutions have always been seat-of-the-pants IME.

Regarding the PEX...I know people have this installed under wood floors for radiant heat, but it is hard for me to reconcile the real energy used to transfer heat to the home with this method. Both materials resist heat transfer aggressively. It doesn't make engineering sense to me.

[Sparkss]

ETM Service is going to send me some parts next week, when they get more in stock.

Interestingly enough they stated that the white bearings shouldn't need replacing and they almost never wear out. Has anyone had any experiences with these bearings, one way or another ? If they in fact don't really wear out then most of my rant and bluster was wasted energy on my part and baically baseless... Now where is that "sheepish grin" smiley icon at when I really need it ?

[jnarowe]

I like the white bearings but I have no idea if they are wearing out or even what the signs of that would be. It seems to me the tolerances would be pretty fine but I certainly wouldn't want them spinning around. Mine are all press-fit IIRC.

Just to keep it "real", I have never heard of a bearing that doesn't wear out.

[spazz]

with all the problems they are having with the vortec pumps it makes me wonder if the company is having financal issues and are trying to limit the amount of warrantee work thee have by saying things like" the bearings never weare out". bearings are a wear item in any pump or motor. you cant get away from it. but you can limit the amount of wear on the bearing by purchasing a higher quality bearing with top grade materials.

is that a ball bearing? or is it a bushing and shaft bearing? the reason i ask is.... they do make all ceramic ball bearings but there extreamly expensive to buy for small applications. i looked into a full ceramic bearing that was about the diameter of a pencel and it cost almost $80.

[jnarowe]

I am sure they are having issues seeing all the posts about pump failures, nevermind my own issue.

And Scott, no need to get back to me, I was looking for advice on my tank issue but have gotten past that point. Thanks for trying though, I know you are busy!