Another Pico Jar / Quarantine Capsule

[reynaldoramon]

Didn't see the 160...

 

[Myka]

Didn't see the 160...

There is a 100 as well.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

This is the pump I'm getting for my 2.5 gallon jar. Its 0 to 180 gph. To get a seal, I ordered 3 sheets of rubber with 1/8" thickness. I got a clear glass plate ($1 at walmart) for a top. I cut the rubber sheets into rings and glued them to the play to create a seal. Then I cut a notch out of the rubber "gasket" for wires to come out and let the top be level, and somewhat level.

Nice find on the pump. I only see the 180 offered at my normal suppliers as well. @Myka , where did you see the smaller version?

Dennis

 

[Myka]

Amazon Canada

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B001AVL8LI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&psc=1

 

[Dennis Cartier]

Amazon Canada

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B001AVL8LI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&psc=1

Thanks Mindy. I would never have thought to look there.

Comparing the various versions, it looks like the 180 GPH is the smallest version of the ones with the magnetic mounts. The older, smaller pico designs are all suction cup mounts. Something to keep in mind when selecting. Especially if you are trying to fit it in a confined space where getting access to compress a suction cup may be difficult.

Dennis

 

[Myka]

Ohhh good catch! I didn't notice that!

 

[Dennis Cartier]

I am reviving this project, or at least working towards reviving it. We will see how long the drive lasts. The thread by @brandon429 about keeping SPS in a fish bowl prompted the re-kindled interest. Especially the part about having the tank bubbled only.

While using this jar for my quarantine tank, I figured out that the 1/4" push connect bulk head is pretty limiting to water flow. This jar has the single drilled hole with a silicone gasket. I want everything that the tank requires to come through this one hole. Air, ATO, AWC, and dosing. So the 1/4" is not going to cut it. Draining and refilling would take an eternity. So I have ordered some 3/8" hose barbs and hopefully matching nuts off Amazon. I figure if I can get the tubing up to using 3/8" then the flow restrictions may be bearable.

As I don't want any equipment in the tank, I plan to use an adhesive heating pad on the bottom of the jar. An 8W 8" x 6" pad *should* get us into an acceptable range for coral.

I have a bunch of parts that I ordered online, have kicking around and never used. This will be an opportunity to make use of some of these parts.

From the parts bin, an Arduino for controlling the AWC, ATO and dosing. Every jar needs a controller right?! The Arduino will make use of some non-contact capacitive level sensors that I have on hand. A high level and mid level sensor should be all the inputs we need for automating the AWC and ATO.

The AWC will be using one peristaltic stepper based pump head from 10 that I ordered but never used. Ditto with a stepper driver. The design that I want to use (and test) is to have the pump pulling and pushing from / to the tank with a T on one hose with 2 back to back check valves. One check valve will pull from new SW and the other will push to the drain. The Arduino can run the pump in one direction to drain the tank until the low level sensor trips, and then run it in reverse to fill the tank with new SW until the high level sensor trips. I have been wanting to try this arrangement for awhile to see how it compares to using dual headed pumps.

The ATO will also be using a stepper pump and making use of the high level sensor.

Finally, a 3rd stepper pump will be for dosing All For Reef. This is an all-in-one dosing product that delivers all elements a coral needs to grow. Again, I have been wanting to test this for awhile to see if it is an option for small quarantine tanks. This would not be a replacement for the water change, but may help to smooth out varying levels caused by growth.

For lighting, I am planning on ordering some of the ABI Tuna Blue 12W lights. I have a stack of Prime HD units here that will eventually be for some other tanks once set up, but I would rather test out the ABI lights and at the same time, stop me from fiddling with the spectrum. I am a terrible fiddler and when it comes to LED, you can throw your corals for a loop with constant changes.

All very ambitious plans. Now we just see if I can keep focused enough to make them come to be.

Dennis

 

[Dennis Cartier]

The 3/8" hose barbs arrived from Amazon. Unfortunately they are not going to work. The threaded portion is too short, and the silicon grommet the jar came with it is too thick. So the nut would never be able to reach the thread.

Time to rethink the piping for the jar. I figured out a combination of CPVC fittings that should allow me to compress the original silicon grommet similar to how the spigot did to form the water tight seal. However using thise setup would be permanent as the CPVC would have to be cut off to be removed. My only concern is if something fails or starts leaking, not being able to quickly replace the piping to the jar, might prove difficult.

I looked at uniseals, but the ground hole in the jar is 3/4" and there are no uniseals for this hole size. I did however find some grommet fittings that will work. Grommet fittings are similar to uniseals, except they use a hose barb to pierce the grommet and apply pressure to seal. Most importantly they sell one size that uses a 3/4" hole. So I plan to order 10 of them to give me some spares for replacements and / or more jars.

The piping will not be as easy as the CPVC would have allowed, but at least it will be maintainable.

Dennis

 

[Ratvan]

I have two of these pumps. One rattles unless upside down and the other runs perfectly silent whichever way I hang it. One in a 5.5g cube and one in my 2.5g Pico. Nice simple design and moves a decent amount of water, just wish I could get a rfg for it

 

[Dennis Cartier]

Time for an update. Things are progressing in a steady fashion. I have ordered the grommet and barb connectors. Hopefully they will arrive soon so I can test if they will meet the requirements.

For lighting, I am making a bit of a left turn. I planned on trying the ABI 12W Tuna Blue PAR38 bulbs, but they have been out of stock at Amazon in the US, and the fulfilled by Amazon, is the only shipping option that will ship to Canada. No matter, because in the meantime while noodling around about a PH probe board design in the DIY forum, I saw a post by @theatrus and it reminded me to check his BlueAcro site just in case he had anything suited for the my pico jar. That is when I saw his AcroStar Shine Pro 32W boards and I knew I had found my light!

What had attracted me to the ABI bulbs was that they covered the entire blue spectrum, not just a couple of blue peaks. This is what I had done with my DIY LEDs I had made for a tank about 10 years ago. It worked great, and truth be told, I have been trying to get back to those results with off the shelf lights ever since.

Which brings us to the BlueAcro lights. These boards also cover the blue spectrum, but instead of using white LEDs, they use Mint and PC Amber LEDs to fill in just the portion of the spectrum that we are lacking with pure blues. This should give excellent colour rendition without the need for whites. They also support dimming and are perfectly sized for a nano tank, or pico jar in this case. I plan to mount the boards on 2020 aluminum extrusions and use the light stand as the heatsink. I just need to get a buddy to 3D print a cover for the board and I should have a stylish nano targeted light. I ordered 4, so enough for 2 pico jars if I run 2 per jar (from different angles), or 4 jars if I run just 1. Though the extras will probably end up as spares to be kept on hand for future projects. They are spec'd to cover 12" x 12" and about 12" deep so 1 may be enough, but we will see.

With the above lights in mind, I now need a 5V PWM signal to be on hand for the dimming, so I ordered a ML reef-pi hat goby board which provides all the features I need for the lights, stepper dosing heads and level sensors. So much for using boards from my existing parts bin! At least I have managed to resist ordering the newer stepper drivers that are upgrades to my on hand ones that integrated a basic controller with a potentiometer speed knob and start/stop and direction harness. Oh well at least my jar will be able to be internet enabled and have its own Web/cmdline.

I still need to do a search for a lid more optically permissive than the one the jar came with. I plan to start with plant saucers that others have used and see if any can be found in the right dimensions.

Dennis

 

[Dennis Cartier]

The ML reef-pi hat goby made by @Michael Lane arrived today. Neat little board. I love the fact that this board will make RPI easier to integrate into DIY solutions. I prefer working in Linux over Wiring (Arduino). I plan to use one of these goby boards for some DIY automated CalRx builds I have on the go (DIY (Schuran) Jetstream stlye automatic Calcium Reactor) as well. The inclusion of the darlington drivers will be perfect for driving the 12V solenoids for the CalRx. They are out of stock at the moment though.

Dennis

 

[Michael Lane]

I'm looking forward to seeing some water and live in there (both tanks)!

I've been thinking of finding some way to have something I can keep in my office, and this might be just the kind of thing.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

Time for an update. This project is still alive and slowly progressing. I have some blocking dependencies that will delay when it can finally be setup (more on that later). I have been using the downtime to iterate through the hardware components and replacing/altering the planned implementations before the tanks are even wet.

The grommet fittings that I plan to use looked like they would work, but in a kludgey sort of way. Lots of hoses and transitions using hose barbs, etc. I could see that this would be something that would bug me, so I started looking for different (cleaner) solutions. What I found was that the hose barb bodies, have a 16 mm outer diameter. This got me to wondering if I might be able to make the leap directly to CPVC piping and dispense with hoses, etc.

What I found is that if I slice off the barb, the remaining body slips snuggly into a 1/2" CPVC CTS fitting. Note, the CTS part is important as I found out recently, and means Copper Tubing Size. This changes the inner and out dimensions of the CPVC and just happens to match the OD of the grommet fitting body.

Here is an un-modified grommet barb along with one where I cut the barb off with a Dremel tool. A grommet is also shown along with a small band that I sliced off my test fitting to make the internal lift pipe fit more firmly.

As mentioned, during the test fitting, I found that the planned internal lift tube made out of CPVC fittings had a tendency to pop off because the rubber grommet extended quite far along the internal portion of the barb. This prevented the CPVC from seating fully and firmly. My solution is cut a narrow strip off the grommet, shortening the internal portion. To do this, I partially inserted the grommet, then used an Xacto knife to trim off the portion extending past the hole in the glass.

This gives a nice, clean starting point for hooking up the jar to the support systems.

The project is waiting on a few things before it can actually get setup wet. I need to wait for the floor in my office to be tiled before setting this up. Unfortunately the office floor is waiting for the renovations of the rest of the house to be completed before it can get done. The renovations upstairs were supposed to be completed for October 1st, but are running behind due to the pandemic.

I have been planning to build a dedicated water change/mixing station for all my (planned) tanks to use. I want to use 3 200G vertical tanks for 1 RODI and 2 NSW. They take up a fair bit of space and I don't really have the space currently, but I am looking at building a heated enclosure in the cold room under my front steps. I am pretty sure I can keep it above freezing with minimal heating, just with some foam board insulation. I am going to need an inline heating solution for water changes on the jar(s), which will definitely be needed if the NSW is cold, but it was going to be needed anyway even if the NSW is at room temperature.

I have more stuff I am working on, but that is enough of an update for now.

Dennis

 

[Dennis Cartier]

While I am thinking of it, I had better get some of my recent ideas documented in the thread. I like to record them, so that later, when I have totally forgotten about the ideas, I can read the thread and re-discover them.

The Umbilical

I have taken to calling the fitting on the jar, the umbilical. Like the natural kind, this umbilical provides all the elements that will be going into and exiting the jar. The umbilical will provide.

• Air for driving the lift pump
• RODI ATO water
• Filling and draining with new saltwater
• All-For-Reef dosing additive (optional)

The plan is to have a tee attached to the union with 1 leg pointed up and the other down. The up side will transition to 1/4" John Guest fittings and a series of stacked tees will provide All-For-Reef, RODI and finally air input. The down side will have a peristaltic pump inline for draining the jar water to waste and re-filling with NSW.

For doing the dosing I will probably grab a cheap bluetooth based doser. I would normally build a stepper based dosing pump, but for early versions, an off the shelf doser can fill in until I have a better idea of how needed it is. I am a bit worried about the small amounts of dosing that would be required. If I have drying problems, I may need to explore adding a thin tube inside the RO tubing that extends deeper down into the umbilical for the AFR to exit closer to the tank.

The ATO will be controlled by using a master solenoid valve that turns on the RODI feed along with an individual solenoid valve for each jar. The thinking is, if the solenoid for a jar fails open, the master solenoid will still prevent a flood. I have a flood sensor on the RODI unit itself, but I should probably look at building a distributed one so that floods elsewhere can trip the cut-off for the RODI. Using inline redundant solenoids also allows for automated failure testing. They both need to be energized for water to flow, so if you energize only 1 of the 2 periodically and wait to see if the level sensor gets tripped anyway, you can detect solenoids that have failed open.

The air will be provided by a 4 port air pump I have on hand. I have the air as the last input on the stack of 2 tees so that all the fluids below will run down and get pushed out and mixed in the tank by the air stream.


The Sensor Mast

For ease of maintenance, I want to be able to unscrew the union on the umbilcal (of an empty jar) and be able to walk away with the jar without having a bunch of crap stuck to or dangling from the jar. That means the heating mat will be under the jar, but not stuck to it. The underside of the jar is slightly concave, so I will need to build a convex base for the jar to sit on with the heating mat sandwiched in between. This also means other things like level sensors and temperature sensors cannot be stuck to the jar.

I plan on using some 2020 aluminum extrusion to build a vertical mast that will be positioned behind the jar and allow sensors to be positioned at various levels in close proximity to the jar.

There will be 2 capacitive level sensors, 1 high and 1 low, that will be able to be adjusted higher or lower on the mast in the slots in the 2020. These will be the sensors I linked earlier in the thread and have on hand already.

For controlling the temperature, I plan to use Melexis Contact-less Infrared Sensor - MLX90614 This will allow the temperature of the jar to be measured, which should reflect the temperature of the water it contains. Again this will be attached to the mast and not be touching the jar, just pointed at it. The controller will use the reading from this sensor to toggle the heating mat under the jar off an on.


The Lid

I have been debating how to make the lid optically efficient and still seal well. The lids that come with the jars are a thick lid with a knob in the middle and lots of curving surfaces. I was thinking of using some clear acetate cut down into a disc, but I think I have a better idea. I plan on using 9" Round Low Iron Clear Flat Glass, 4 MM 9" Round Low Iron Clear Flat Glass, 4 MM, along with a silicone baking sheet cut down into a gasket that lies on the lip of the jar with the glass lid laying on top. the only remaining hurdle is the the glass companies' online ordering site only allows shipping within the US to be calculated, so I will need to call them to see if they will ship to Canada.


The Controller

I plan on having 4 separate jars attached to a Reef-PI Goby board. The Goby has enough PWM outputs to drive all 4 LEDs with 2 channels per LED. It also has 8 12v solenoid outputs (ULN2803) enough for the 4 ATO solenoids and 1 master solenoid. It also has 8 GPIO's which is the exact number I need for the level sensors on the 4 jars. It has 2 I2C ports, which the Melexis temperature sensors use. However they have a fixed I2C address that is not changeable, so an TCA9548A I2C Multiplexer will be needed to prevent the temperature sensors from conflicting with each other.


No update is as good without a photo, so here are the 3 remaining recruits I purchased today to complete the 4 jars.

 

[Michael Lane]

These are really cool ideas! I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out, and maybe trying it myself once things calm down.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

I have some updates to report. I was able to order the 9" glass discs from the glass place I linked down in Pennsylvania. The 4 pieces arrived today. They fit perfect on the jar with a 1/2" overhang. It's like I measured it or something

The 5V Melexis parts finally came back into stock. I grabbed 4 of them and have them on the way. While I was waiting for them to come back into stock, I found a Grove version from Seeed Studio using the same part, all mounted on a nice module for $10 more per unit. I had pretty much decided to buy the Grove version instead of the loose parts, but I procrastinated a couple of days after I received an email from Seeed that their version had come back into stock (they were out of stock as well), and they went back out of stock before I pulled the trigger. After that I decided the next time I had a chance to get some of these sensors, either loose or the Grove modules, I would jump on it.

I have decided to forego the plans to use a peristaltic pump hooked to check valves to provide drain and fill. Instead I am going to go with a 3 way ball valve that can be manually moved to a drain and fill position. I ordered 4 of 1/2" FNPT Series 350 3-Way PVC Ball Valve with Buna-N Seals and they are on their way.

One thing that I was thinking through was how to heat the water change water. I thought about inline heaters, etc. but have decided to go with a water change reservoir, probably a 5 gal bucket located in the stand under the jars. I will place a heater in the bucket so the water change water is already at temperature when starting a water change. I also plan to place another 5 gal bucket for the waste water in the stand as well. The water change reservoir will hold a Sicce pump hooked to a manifold attached to 1 input of the 3 way ball valves. The other input of the ball valves will be hooked to a manifold leading to the waste bucket.

I have come up with a solution for a problem that I did not realize I had. I want to run all 4 jars off a single air pump. Anyone who has done a similar thing, running multiple vessels off a communal air pump will probably have run into the problem of the water level of each vessel impacting the amount of air delivered. The vessel with the lowest water level gets the most air, with the vessels with the highest water level getting less or even none if the water levels differ enough. You can try to get around it by using a manifold with adjustment valves, but it quickly becomes annoying with constant adjustments required. When I thought about running all 4 jars off a single pump, I remembered the water high issue. Then I remembered the last time I ran into this while culturing phyto, I had built something to deal with this, but had never put it into use.

This a photo of 2 valve modules I built for this exact purpose. It is a bad photo as the 2 modules are placed with the carrier blocks together, but each is a 4 valve module with 4 Clippard EV valves. These are the same valves that are inside the Carbon Doser units people use for driving their CaRx. This will be actuated using the reef-pi board.

Using 1 of these modules, I can use a single air pump and easily divide the air flow between the 4 jars with no effects from their water levels. At least that is what I think will happen. I never got around to testing it.

The other issue that I have been thinking about, was how to get the salinity exact for water changes. I have multiple high precision hydrometers that I keep on hand, but I have been wanting something easier to use, so I have been keeping an eye on Ebay for a used Thermo Orion conductivity meter. I took a chance and ordered a used Orion Star 3 unit with a 4 electrode probe that was being sold for parts. The seller made it sound like they had not tested, so it may or may not work. I figured it the meter really was bad, I would still be getting a 4 electrode probe and could search for a working meter to mate it to. When it arrived, I found it had some corroded AA batteries in it, and after cleaning it up and putting fresh batteries in, it seems to work fine. Though I am having my challenges calibrating it. For now I have manually calibrated against the result provided by one of the high precision hydrometers.

The next project I need to undertake to lay the ground work for the reef jars is to get my permanent water change station built. I will be ordering (3) 240 Gal vertical tanks for the water change station. These will be used by all my tanks, including the (4) 2 Gal jars. This water change station will be housed in the cold storage under my front porch, so some engineering will be required to deal with the cold parts of the year here.

Dennis

 

[Dennis Cartier]

While I wait for other projects to progress before my jar project can truly get underway, I decided to test the little stick on reptile heater pad I plan to use. They are small 6" x 8" 8W reptile heater pads. I plan to have them out of sight under the jars, attached to a convex base that sandwiches the heater pad into the concave base of the jar. I wanted to make sure that they would be able to keep the jars in the range of 78F.

I happy to report that my test setup, a heater pad sitting on a plastic bag full of dried beans with the jar on top, is able to raise the water temperature of the jar 5-6F over ambient. That should put me in the right range with my planned infrared temperature sensors only needing to step in and turn off the pad when ambient gets above 74F. Hopefully the inclusion of the air feed when the jar is running does not lower the differential from ambient too much.

I saw that the ABI Tuna Blue PAR38 bulbs are now back in stock, so I grabbed 2 of those. I plan to use them on 2 of the jars while using the blueacro Acro Shine 32W modules on the other 2. That should give me a pretty good evaluation of both bulbs. The ABI units are know to be good matches for picos, and have big expectations for the blueacro ones.

Dennis