Gilroy 425g Build Thread (All Apex, all the time)

[Terence]

Thanks all.

The plan right now is to wrap the canopy and the rest of the stand in Ipe from leftover pieces from doing my deck 18 months ago. The bottom right half will be fully enclosed with doors on the front. The left side will be open. All the steel will be clad in wood and the bottom surface will have the same granite as above. It will be lit up from above with accent LED. This will make for a dramatic look as it will make it look like the tank is standing without much support and light is passing through from above. We will put some sort of art piece or bowl below.

The back splash is 2.75" high. Front to back the ledge is about 6-6.5" from the backsplash. I haven't measured yet but the original wood ledge was 5.5" I think. There is an additional steel support under the ledge so it will support my weight all the way around. Makes it easy to work on the tank.

 

[Terence]

So a couple of days ago my skimmer pump decided to shut down. It is a Reef Octopus Skimmer with a new DC pump and controller - One of the pre-production Varios. Anyways, when these pumps start to get dirty and not work up to par, the controllers will simply not be able to run them. I should have had an alert on power monitoring for this outlet, but I forgot. So, I will help you all by showing you how cool it is to see what exactly happened on the power chart (including little peaks where the pump tried to restart itself). And also, I will show you where to configure the power alerts in Apex Fusion for the new Apex. My Pump is now cleaning in vinegar.

 

[psirex]

I have a similar pump model on my ROR 300int good to know this!

 

[Terence]

Well I got it all cleaned up and spinning nice, put it back together, and the controller will not get it over 17W now. Barely spins. And it spins freely in the ceramic bearings just fine. It could be that the failure was really due to the controller and the excess dirt just was more than it could take. I have a couple of the newer, production controllers in the office that were sent in for Apex Ready testing from Coral Vue. I will give one of those a shot tomorrow and see how it goes. It's always something!

 

[ws6kid]

Looking good! Still love that seating at the tank.

 

[fab]

What is the front-to-back width of the horizontal surface of the granite ledge running across the front of your tank? ...and the thickness of the vertical granite backsplash strip behind it?

...and ... If you were ever to redo your design, would you make the ledge wider or narrower or the same?
I am putting a ledge on my system and am fretting over just how wide to make it. Your impressions of your own design, now that you have it installed, would help me.

Thanks,
fab

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Looks great man!

 

[Terence]

...and ... If you were ever to redo your design, would you make the ledge wider or narrower or the same?
I am putting a ledge on my system and am fretting over just how wide to make it. Your impressions of your own design, now that you have it installed, would help me.

Thanks,
fab

I measured it again and it is 6" from front of backsplash to the edge of the ledge. This is about .75" more than when it was when it was just wood. To me, it is the perfect width. I would certainly not make it wider and one could get away with it being 1" narrower if they wanted and it would still be very functional. Remember, I use this for a "catwalk" of sorts to work on the tank.

 

[fab]

Th

I measured it again and it is 6" from front of backsplash to the edge of the ledge. This is about .75" more than when it was when it was just wood. To me, it is the perfect width. I would certainly not make it wider and one could get away with it being 1" narrower if they wanted and it would still be very functional. Remember, I use this for a "catwalk" of sorts to work on the tank.

Thanks for the dimensions. I will probably go with 4-5 inches. I will not be standing on it. Also I do not want to encourage folks to leave stuff on it. I want enough space to put fish food and such and a drink or two, but not a plate.
fab

 

[justingraham]

How are the lights working out for you? Have any regrets or any problems?
After a long talk with Touilo from ReefBrite yesterday ( that man knows his stuff and is as nice as can be btw) I am going to go with the same set up as you. Except just two blue xho's.
I will be going with three 15 inch metal halides over a six foot tank.
Also it has been awhile since I read ur build what's your tank dimensions?
Tank looks amazing and any doubts my future wife had about the lights were gone as soon as I showed her ur tank.
Good luck and keep up the good work

Justin

 

[Terence]

So far the lights work good. I still have to get the dimming working on the LED as well as the other two Halides (the cables do not yet have a splitter so you only get one dimming channel per RJ45 - Tulio said they are doing new cables for me to test). I just got the dimming modules for the LED last Friday and was busy with other projects over the weekend. The Halide dimming is a bit disappointing so far but Tulio said they will look into it. It seems that on the 250W MH, they do not dim 50% as I was told. That is only the 400W that do that. The 250 only dim down 33%. I confirmed this with the Apex power monitoring as well as our PAR monitoring kit.

As far as the look, even without tweaking yet it is just about what I like. Very crisp. The right amount of pop from the blues and the UV. Heat has not been an issue at all. Does it heat up the tank with the MH, of course, but that is what I wanted. The hood temps never exceed 122 degrees though and that is with 8, 2" holes on each enclosure side for ventilation.

I cannot stress enough that so many factors go into lighting choice. Every person has to balance all the factors for their tastes, budget, and individual tank needs/demands.

 

[Terence]

Skimmer pump was replaced last night - it was the pump motor, not the controller. So the motor is getting another vinegar bath just to make sure it is not dirt buildup related. We will see later today when I try to fire it up again.

Interesting aside with the Varios skimmer pump. This supposedly 45W pump is actually showing 75W on the Apex. Even with an inefficient DC power supply it should not be that high. I wonder if that is the rating for water flow, not skimmer and air use. I will confirm with Kill-A-Watt sometime in the future.

 

[SchnitzelReef]

First deltec and now reef octopus, you got bad luck with pumps. Maybe it's time to look into a sicce pump for your skimmer too. lol

Even though I don't trust DC pumps, I've had my bubble King DC pump running for 2.5 years. I've only cleaned it 1 time.

 

[Feet4Fish]

Still using it. Works great. Have done a few water changes with it. I have a ten boxes of it (ordered a dozen) in my FishCave so I think that says where I stand on it at this time. We will see how things go in the tank and also I will have some Triton tests done on some freshly mixed samples as well as my tank in a couple of months time.

Hot salt is great. I have been using it in my system for the last 9 months. I get mine from addictive aquaculture as no one local carries it.

 

[Terence]

This is what happens to your pH when your skimmer is not working:

 

[Terence]

Cleaned the RO Skimmer pump, almost spotless. Reseated the ceramic bearing in the silicone rear seal and seated that. put it all back together. Still won't spin up. It tries, then dies.

I will send it back to CoralVue for a replacement.

Also figured out the wattage confusion. So the pump for the skimmers is the 5500S which does say DC24V and 35-50W. However, it seems they do not drive this pump with 24V for the skimmer application. To make this skimmer pump they evidently take the VarioS return pump, the the impeller to the pinwheel fractioning type, and boost it up with a 36V power supply and that it gets up to 75W. That is where all the confusion is. It looks as if the factory simply got the info wrong on the label.

 

[lennyd19]

Looks great! Could you explain how you use your Dos on your calcium reactor and the benefits and down falls to it. Thanks!

 

[Terence]

Looks great! Could you explain how you use your Dos on your calcium reactor and the benefits and down falls to it. Thanks!

I have the DOS set up to push water into the CR. When you add more water, the excess rolls into the aquarium out of the output with no restriction or valve to clog.

So right now I use a profile to do the dosing as opposed to using the automatic method with the chart. I do this because I want a specific dosing frequency and the algorithm in the automatic setting does not give me what I want.

The profile is set up to have the DOS push 180ml into the CR every 3 min (180 seconds) @ 250ml/min. This means it runs about 45 seconds every three minutes. Because the profile settings only allow 255 doses this way and I may have wanted to tweak it here and there, I split the day in two for the outlet programming and used two profiles to do it (only used two different ones in case I wanted to play around independently).

The CR pH barely fluctuates. This proved my theory that non-continuous CR feed could work just fine.

One of the best parts of using the DOS is the ease with which you want to make changes. Now both the melt point of the media AND the flow rate of the reactor are controlled (digitally) by my Apex from my phone. This makes it much easier to tweak accurately and consistently and test.

Here are some of the drawbacks:

- noise - at 250ml/min, no peristaltic pump that a hobbyist can afford will be quiet. However, since my application is not in a living space (my FishCave), it is not a problem for me.
- wear and tear - we will see the longevity, but I have been using the same head on this DOS for 4-5 months already and it is doing just fine. Replacing the head set is just $30 so if one gets six months on average, it is probably worth it.
- max flow rate - given the 1/3 duty cycle choice by Neptune Systems to improve longevity of the motors, it means that with one pump head I can only get to a point where my dosing is just over 80ml/min. If I need to go past that, I will have to employ the second head to do it. Until then, the second pump head will dose AcroPower from Two Little Fishies!

 

[lennyd19]

Thank you for the detail. I do use my Dos for AWC it is loud. But I have it at night when I am sleeping so does not bother me. But I really like this way, it really is complete control over the Ca RX. Also seems a lot more stable for any reactor. Maybe on my next build. Keep up the great work.

 

[Terence]

I think the best way to do the AWC with a DOS is to find the time of day when you and your family is not home or would not care and then set the water change to that time frame and let the DOS wizard do the calculation to determine the speed necessary.

For most this time is likely when they are at work. If the tank is at your work or place of business, it is the opposite.

I guess what I am saying is that (as you pointed out) the water change operation does not have to happen 24/7 to be effective. Heck, if you had it go only twice a week (with advanced DOW programming) it would be better than having to do it yourself!