Lunchbucket's New 58gal RR inprogress - LOTS OF PICS

[MyMonkey]

Lunch, My Tang was great. Only had him for a short while unfortunately. I bought some fish from someone who was getting out of sw. The fish looked healthy etc. Within a week everything was sick, then dead after 24 - 36 hours for most of them. I had a yellowtail damsel that lasted a few days but, he died as well. Turns out I brought in some sort of Bacterial Infection and wham, everything dead but one fish. I am still only with the one fish. Cave Goby. In all I lost 8 fish I think. Very frustrating.
Corals and everything else did fine though.
That was maybe 3 months ago.
At any rate. The Kole was beautiful. I never thought of them as plain. I have seen them in large groups in Hawaii. Yellows and Kole's. Theres a pic around of a bunch of them on the back of a turtle picking it clean. Man, miss that little buggar.

[Lunchbucket]

sorry to hear about loosing all of your fish.

groups in hawaii?? that would be cool to see!! pic w/ a bunch around a turtle??? know where that pic is at

Lunchbucket

[MyMonkey]

It was in a digital photography magazine. I searched for it onlie just now to no avail. Great photo for sure. There were at least a dozen Kole and Yellows swimming around one huge turtle picking algae of it's back. I will do a bit of research and see if I can't locate the magazine.

[Lunchbucket]

cool...let me know if you find it

came home today to a more active and less shy tang. but Mrs. Clown has a nice gouge or poke on her side. guess Mr. Tang gave her a dose of her own medicine...serves her right...she is a bizitch

Lunchbucket

[Lunchbucket]

i looked more closely at the poke and it is a slice. guess she ****ed Mr. Tang off

i'm working on getting a new skimmer to try out. i'll have more info as the week goes on.

Lunchbucket

[Lunchbucket]

i figured out which Euro-Reef skimmer i am getting!!!! I talked w/ Jeff and he is making me a custom RC80. i have to put the reciculating pump and the outlet and inlet on the same side as close to each other as possible as i only have a 10gal sump w/ VERY little room. we figured it would fit by making it custom

so i will have the very FIRST EVER RC80 skimmer. it is like the old ES5-3 but will be reciculating w/ a highly modded sedra 3500. it will pull 500lph of air into that little guy. should kick some serious tail IMO. this skimmer will be a better fit for my tank then the insainly oversized one i have now. quite a few people that i have talked to have seen decreases in performance will a grossly oversize skimmer. i'm excited to see this skimmer and see it in action. it should ship out early next week i believe! so i won't get it till late next week or early the week after!!!

also talked w/ Jeff about the new impellers and this will boost the performance even more...but they won't be available for quite some time...no biggie they will be a drop in type upgrade so i can upgrade down the road easy

i'll get the camera out quick and snap a few pics of the tang if he will sit still.

corals are growing very well now. and my alk is stable or climbing just slightly. the reactor is really doing a great job on my tank

Lunchbucket

[Lunchbucket]

just a little eye candy to make the thread a little more popular. i could not get a pics of that dang yellow eye tang. he will never sit still and is impossible to catch a photo of w/ my limited function camera. if i had a new one (hope i get one for x-mas ) it wouldn't be as much of a problem

coloring up nicely


pink hairy prostrata


thought this was a cool shot


this pic does NOT show the intensity of the blue tips on this coral. i can never capture a good pic of the tips but this is one of the best. the tips look like a little lighter then a Oregon torts but very nice blue.


no the greatest pic of my Chips but it does show off how hairy it is it has already encrusted almost all the superglue in 3wks and is growing 2 new nubs. quite a fast grower specially for a new guy


Lunchbucket

[JVHam]

What are you doing with the reefmania skimmer Interested in selling?

[melev]

That's pretty neat that he's calling his skimmer RC now. Obviously Jeff really does love ReefCentral.

Why am I seeing people post Liters Per Hour instead of Gallons Per Hour lately? Is that a rating for the Sedra pump?

Your corals look beautiful. I can't wait to see this tank looking like your 20g did.

[maxxII]

Marc, thats for the amount of air his skimmer is pulling in...not water. Hence the LPH vs GPH.

Eric, those corals look smokin man!

Pics of the new skimmer?

Nick

[melev]

How do you determine that? Is this yet another new-fangled gauge?

[maxxII]

If you're really interested, I can dig up a thread on RF where Mike (Mojoreef over there and I think over here too) explains it all in mindnumbing detail.
You pretty much want approximately 20% of the skimmer capacity to be air mixture for optimum results. According to Mojo's math formulas, the ER skimmers are good for that, they just have a higher flow thru rate, (meaning less contact time) than is desired for some molecules to attach to the bubbles...which is why many skimmer manufacturers have introduced recirc models...which increase contact time.

Nick

[melev]

No, I don't want to have mind-numbing information. I just was wanting to know how people are determining this number. I've seen it come up in multiple threads this week, and I thought it was a Bubble King thing until Eric described his ER tonight.

[Travis]

Here is a good article on skimming. It includes some of Escobal's formulas for calculating flow through rates and air input rates:
http://www.hawkfish.org/snailman/skimmer101.htm

A couple good quotes from the article:

According to Escobal: "...the volume of air in a skimmer can never be greater than about 13% of the volume of the skimmer or the bubbles will merge.

For optimum skimming using a counter current design (or actually any other design for that matter), the water in your tank should not flow through the skimmer any more than two times per day.

It is worth taking a look at the flow-through chart to calculate how much water you should be flowing through your skimmer. You want all of your system's water to flow through 2 times per day but it is not as taking a 100 gallon system and feeding the skimmer 200 gallons per day. The reason for this is because all the skimmed water is mixed with tank water after exiting the skimmer. The chart gives you an exact number to shoot for so you can process ALL of your systems water 2x per day.

[melev]

I read it, and tried to understand what it is saying, and then tried to apply it to my own system. I guess I'm overskimming.

With a volume of 330g of water, and two Sedra 5000s on my skimmer, I'm pushing 1000gph through the skimmer as far as I can tell. That sounds like 3x per hour to me, rather than 2x per day. And the 13% air - I've got no idea how to figure that out.

Fortunately my ORP stays at 440.

[Travis]

Marc, are you going by how much water those Sedra's move with a regular impeller or a NW?

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how to figure out the air flow. I can understand figuring out how much air should be injected in a frozen point in time, but when water is constantly flowing through the chamber it makes things a little complicated. Or maybe it is just as easy as saying if you move 100 gph of water through the skimmer you should be moving 13 gph of air through it.

[melev]

Well, I looked up a Sedra pump in Google, and it said the model 5000 moved 500gph. I didn't really think there was more or less flow with a different impellar.

While some love to figure this out to a science, I tend to look at results. I'm not inclined to understand all of how it works, at least at this point.

[Lunchbucket]

JVHam - haven't decided what i am gonna do w/ it yet...but i thought about selling it..thought about keeping it for a bigger tank

melev - like Travis and maxxII said that is how they measure the amount of air being put in a skimmer by a pump

you can get an air meter from Dwyer. Travis has on on his beta skimmer from acronom and JB NY has one on his dual becket skimmer (zephrant build). then you can adjust and measure the amount of air comming into the body

yeah i can't wait to have it fill in like the 20H

maxxII - thanks for the compliments i'm enjoying the tank much more now. no pics of the skimmer yet. i'll email Jeff and see if i can get a pic of it as soon as it is built or while it's being built

i hope to slow the contact time to get some of those pesky nutrients out. not sure how i will measure the flow through though

i'm w/ you melev. too many details to think about on a skimmer and to understand. that is what the company is for...to figure those things out for me.

also i doubt that your sedra 5000 will pull 500gph. if it is pulling air won't it push less water?? also if it has a NW that might affect output of water

later
Lunchbucket

[Travis]

I'm not sure how much water flow you get with a standard impeller vs a NW but I would wager a guess that the NW would cut the water flow down to about 1/4 of what you would get with a regular impeller. That is just a guess. But just looking at the design differences between the 2 impellers you can tell that NW's are not designed to move water like a regular impeller.

[Stinekraus]

very nice

[Lunchbucket]

i thought i remember a long time ago that it was 300something...but i don't remember where and why i heard that

Lunchbucket

[Lunchbucket]

UPDATE:

just ordered my RC80 Euro-Reef skimmer. not sure when it will be done...but go figure Thanskgiving week will slow it down

Lunchbucket

[maxxII]

Patience Grasshopper.



Question for both you and Travis re: the OM units...

Have you guys taken them apart for any maintenance?

Fortunately I was there when it stopped moving, but....

I had such small tolerances on mione, between the rotating drum and the housing, that a very thin buildup of minerals that caused friction between the drum and the housing. The friction got to be such that the drum wouldnt rotate. The motor is strong enough, but the weakest part of the motor/driveshaft/drum connection broke. The nylon drivehsaft wasnt strong enough to handle the force of the motor and was "cored out" by the rotating tab of the motor that turns the driveshaft. This was exactly how it was designed to work, since hte nylon driveshaft is a $4.00 part. I have new parts coming (today if UPS is to be believed)....and I havent lost anything...but I wass curious if you guys had observed any issues? My OM 4 way HD hasnt been in operation for a year yet.....

Paul said he suspects magnesium as the mineral build up for some reason. He's fielded a couple of calls for this and when he recieved the non rotating drums they were covered in something that didnt dissolve in vineager....

Nick

[Chrisrush]

Lunch,
Do you have a model # for that air meter that you are using. I think that I looked at them previously and they weren't that expensive, so I might have to pick one up.

Chris

[Lunchbucket]

maxxII - BUT I DONT' WANT TO BE PATIENT i want ti NOW NOW NOW. hope it it done soon. oh did i mention that i had it 3day shipped to me UPS is super slow to me so 3day would be my best bet..otherwise it will be a week

nope NEVER had a single issue w/ my OM unit. i think travis did though..or maybe that was just changing drum configurations. i have had mine running for 1.5yrs plus w/ no problems. i love it!!!

i love how Paul designed it so the 4.00 part busts and not the expensive parts. VERY customer friendly IMO

chrisrush - i dont' have an air meter. that is the metere for my effluent out of my ca rx. i measures how much i am dumping out of my reactor

Lunchbucket