kinetic RSR 170

[kinetic]

Ha, yea mine is that plastic/acrylic material. I was thinking that would be the only downfall of it being glass. With glass, I like that you could see through it so you could see the water level. Every once in a while, I have to fine tune the flow with their gate valve. Plus, it's easier to scrape coraline off glass.

Very true. I guess I would prefer glass (uncracked)

 

[ricenoodle]

Still waiting on even a tracking number for my replacement display tank. Reached out to Red Sea to see if they had any updates on the tank being shipped, but haven't heard back yet. I'm guessing Harvey aftermath is still fully problematic (as I would assume).

From the last update, I finally hung the AI Hydra 52 HD. Took a few tries to find the right hanging kit. I happened to need to drill right up into some ceiling joists, so I didn't need the alligator anchors and just used some strong wood screws. I was able to almost put 30% of my body weight on it and it didn't budge, so I think I'm good. The power cable is black and looks ultra ugly. I ordered a braided sleeve in white (1/4") that I'm going to fit over the cable. Hopefully it will look good. I'll also attach the cable to the wall so it's out of the way. Also ignore the PMUP black cable and chiller power cable coming out of the wall to the back of the tank. I'm going to use white neoprene sleeve to give those the same treatments.

Sump is now in the stand. I connected most of the power cables / controller cables, but waiting for the plumbing to go in before doing a nice wire clean up. I don't have my return pump in there because I'm using it to cycle the rock / marinepure plate in a tub at the moment.

Used a neat bungee chord thing that quick releases from a round adhesive piece that I stuck to the top. It doesn't hold too much weight, but works for these cables. I'll clean them up later once plumbing is in. Those two "L" brackets used to hold my ADJ power strip, but I took that out of the cabinet and mounted it behind the tank. I just left those brackets there just in case I needed them for something else.

And here's a shot of the sump without the triangular ATO mount:

And I had to actually mount the dang thing on the opposite wall against the baffle because the magnet couldn't fit with the sump in the cabinet:

That float valve in that location will be a problem as the return piping comes straight down right where the float valve is in that picture. I'd say slide it all the way to the furthest right.

 

[kinetic]

That float valve in that location will be a problem as the return piping comes straight down right where the float valve is in that picture. I'd say slide it all the way to the furthest right.

Oh interesting... is that even if I have the pump outlet all the way to the right, making the return hose bend a bit? Do you have a photo of that area with it all setup?

 

[ricenoodle]

See what i mean? This is how i have the Tunze optical sensor and float valve setup on mine.

 

[kinetic]

Oh ok, gotcha. Actually that should totally miss the float valve... I could probably extend the tube too and move the pump to the right to give it even more clearance.

Also interesting that you have your second pump in that chamber too... I always ran pumps to reactors and such from the skimmer compartment. Any specific reason to do it this way for you?

 

[ricenoodle]

When you get the display tank back i suggest taking your time when putting the piping in as the connection have to be on snug but not too tight otherwise you'll crack the threads, you can check out videos about it on Youtube. What i did was once it was snug i siliconed all of the bulkheads and the fittings as during leak test there were some leaks out of the pipe connections until i tightened it but not too much, then once i saw no leaks i siliconed it. So i wouldn't bend the return piping if you can help it, less tress on the connection that way.

 

[ricenoodle]

Few reasons i have my carbon and GFO pumps back there in the chamber. One to save space, two is because my heater sits right on the other side in the skimmer chamber so that means the pump would be on top of it which wouldn't work, so they would be elsewhere which would cause clutter. Overall i figure the pumps were pulling the same water but by being on this side i'm freeing up alot of space.

 

[kinetic]

When you get the display tank back i suggest taking your time when putting the piping in as the connection have to be on snug but not too tight otherwise you'll crack the threads, you can check out videos about it on Youtube. What i did was once it was snug i siliconed all of the bulkheads and the fittings as during leak test there were some leaks out of the pipe connections until i tightened it but not too much, then once i saw no leaks i siliconed it. So i wouldn't bend the return piping if you can help it, less tress on the connection that way.

Should I be worried about over-tightening and cracking something? I'll probably follow the same course of action as you. Siliconing seems best!

 

[ricenoodle]

Should I be worried about over-tightening and cracking something? I'll probably follow the same course of action as you. Siliconing seems best!

Be VERY CAREFUL when tightening those threads, i've seen alot of threads an video where over tightening cause it to crack. I took my time, once it was snug, i watched it for 24 hours, checking for leaks, tightening slowly as until i see it stopped. Then watched it some more. Once i was for sure it was dry and tight, i siliconed it. You don't want those pipes to crack on you. Watch the series on Mathews Red Sea Reefer 170 on Youtube, you'll see what i mean. His pipes broke and he went through hell to replace it.

 

[kinetic]

Added cable raceways to hide as much of the black cables as possible. Still need to wrap the last bit of black in some white neoprene sleeves. Then I'm going to paint the raceways to match exactly the wall. Put my house plant next to the tank for fun. Preview before paint:

 

[kinetic]

The day has come, the replacement tank arrived on Wednesday morning. After a VERY close inspection, I took delivery of the tank. It came with the plastic overflow top too (which I thought it would not). This tank was not cracked, though quite a bit dirtier inside (cobwebs, dead moth, dusty). Not a big deal, quick vacuum and towel + water, it was cleaned up.

The finishing touches:

1. Plumbed the drain pipes and return
2. Hooked up the return pump (which was being used to cycle my rock in a tub)
3. Fitted the Maxspect Gyre XF130 to the overflow (fit perfectly, a little snug on the drain silencer, but otherwise good)
4. Put in the rock
5. Started the slow process of filling with RO/DI from my RO/DI unit (75gpd, with quite a bit of distance traveled to the room with the tank)
6. Put in sand I rinsed like crazy. I had initially rinsed it with garden hose water for 2.5 hours. Then I rinsed it with the water from the tub that was cycling the rocks. Just a little at a time, multiple times. Pretty sure it diluted the tap water out (which was treated and left for 2 days anyway), and got the sand crystal clear. Added the sand to the tank, and zero cloudiness. horray!
7. The rest of the cycled water I had left, I put into the sump, and it actually filled it almost perfectly.
8. Marinepure plate that was cycling with the rock was also placed in the sump.
9. Finally the tank was full. I turned her on and somehow no major leaks. Maybe I killed all the cycled bacteria with just RO/DI water? Who knows. Then I just mixed the salt right into the display (Aquaforest Reef Salt). Not sure if that was the best idea, but it worked great. NO residue at all anywhere. Pretty cool! I actually over dosed the salt, and spent most of the next day dumping out water and replacing it with more RO/DI. But as of today, it's perfect 35ppt.
10. Dosed ammonium chloride to just under 2ppm, dumped a new bottle of Dr. Tim's One and Only, and now I wait. (by the way, Dr. Tim's Ammonium Chloride bottle says 4 drops per gallon, which is way over 2ppm. I tried with 1 drop per gallon, and it hit 2ppm easily. So if you're using it, don't do 4 drops per gallon. Heck, go under at like 1 drop per half gallon to start just in case).

What's left:

1. My chiller (TECO SeaChill TR10) has these two shutoff valves for the input/output. They are complete crap. The tops just started spouting water out of them. So I took the chiller off the line and am now waiting for replacement elbows from TECO. So no chiller for now (not a big deal).
2. My Neptune ATK FMM module starts beeping warning alarms after 5 minutes, and I can't figure out how to control it independently of my Apex Jr. So I hooked in the Apex Jr. into the aquabus, but I can't seem to connect to it with ApexFusion unless I do a (laborious) firmware upgrade. So I still gotta do all of that. Ugh. Any tips would be great!
3. My Maxspect Gyre is brand new, yet the left impeller (marked A) runs opposite flow of the right impeller (marked B). WHAT? The right side has flow coming in from the bottom, out from the top. The left one is the opposite. No matter what mode I put the stupid thing in, it's opposite. I don't know... Contacted CoralVue with all the details, and they want photos. So I gotta deal with that too.
4. And lastly, just gotta wait for this to cycle. The whole hiccup with Dr. Tim's ammonium chloride didn't really get me the head start I was hoping for. So oh well! I'll probably wait until mid october or early november at this rate to introduce a CUC if anything.

Here are some photos. The weird glare fuzzy stuff in the photos is me holding up two wine glasses on both sides of my camera lens. Just messing around a bit with the reflections (it's not some cheesy filter or effected added in later).

Sump / cabinet shots are in. I kept things pretty simple inside. All controllers and electrical are mounted on a marker board behind the tank in a 5.5" space between cabinet and wall. Also the 1/2" mur-lok tubing goes out the back, down through the floor, and back up into the closet on the right where my BRS Mini reactor is with activated carbon (and soon the Chiller once I get the replacement elbows). So it's really clean. The ATO reservoir is also in the closet, and plumbed through the floor. You'll notice a cable raceway, that's for the Apex PMUP, the chiller power cable, and an extra Neptune Optical Sensor (that will let me know when to refill the ATO reservoir, still have to set that up). I was going to try to route those cables through the floor too for extra cleanliness, but those cables were mostly too short.

All photos taken on a Sony camera, used Priime app to edit (https://priime.com)

 

[kinetic]

My Skimz QuietPro 4.0 and 2.0 pumps are just too loud. I was going to hold off and just see if they got quieter, but they're loud enough for me to hear in the next room. It's not a super loud dB, but it's not dead silent like people have described their Reef Octopus VarioS or EcoTech Vertex pumps.

I'm returning to BRS (they are awesome to let me return them even after using them) and ordered replacement, a Reef Octopus VarioS S-4 and S-2.

Lots of people have said good things about it, so I'm confident they should be at least as good, if not better.

I was thinking of keeping the Skimz as backups, but maybe a cheaper AC pump as a backup would make more sense.

BRS 3-day, hope it'll be here by the weekend for me to install.

 

[czhao1009]

Following along as I'm thinking about the 170 when we move in a month or so and I must say my initial attention was more on the nice photography than the tank itself [emoji16]

 

[kinetic]

Following along as I'm thinking about the 170 when we move in a month or so and I must say my initial attention was more on the nice photography than the tank itself [emoji16]

So far it's a great setup. I think for the price, it can't be beat. The quality is there.

The only things I would change, and they're just personal preferences, is an external overflow offset into a corner, or even peninsula style. I just love clear glass all the way through. Otherwise, it's perfect!

If/when I move next, I'll most likely pickup the Reefer Peninsula 500.

 

[kinetic]

So my ammonia levels have not gone down, and my nitrites never go above 0 or barely detectable.

So last night I added a 4oz. bottle of IO Bio Spira. Before adding it, my ammonia tested at just around 2.0 ppm (or a bit higher) using Red Sea and Salifert tests, and nitrites were undetectable using salifert.

Today, less than 24 hours later, ammonia is down to 0.3 ppm and nitrites up to 0.5ppm (maybe more, hard to tell with this Salifert test)! Wow.

For sure the bio-spira worked. I just got another bottle of Dr. Tim's one and only as well (my third 4 oz bottle), and dumped that in today after testing as well. Why? I don't know, just because I wanted to make sure I had some bacteria that was alive.

Either my past 2 bottles of Dr. Tim's One and Only were very dead, or Bio spira is just a lot faster with processing ammonia. Either way, it's still cycling and we'll see how it all goes.

My latest bottle of Dr. Tim's One and Only had a bunch of junk at the bottom of it. I shook the bottle a bit before adding the whole thing, but this time there was quite a bit of brown debris at the bottom that I haven't seen with past bottles. BIO SPIRA went in brown, but didn't have big bits of gunk.

 

[kinetic]

My ammonia is now almost undetectable, and nitrites are pretty high, around 3ppm. I dosed a tiny bit more ammonium chloride today, but I think I'll now stop dosing until both ammonia and nitrites drop do below 0.2ppm. Once that happens I'll try dosing more ammonium chloride and see if the levels go down to 0. I'll keep waiting for 0.2ppm drops to dose until both are undetectable.

My Skimz QuietPro 4.0 DC pump and 2.0 DC pumps are pretty loud. At 40% my return pump registers 55dB. I asked BRS if I could return them and they said yes. I'm replacing them with Reef Octopus VarioS S-4 and S-2 pumps. They're a bit more powerful, but they can be controlled down to fit the bill. I'll be running the S-4 at around 550gph, and the S-2 around 250gph. I was originally going to go for the Vectra S1 as my return, but I keep seeing broken down M1 pump threads pop up. Even though replacements and what not are sent out quickly, I have yet to see any problems with VarioS pumps. Skimz users say their pumps are really quiet. VarioS owners say it's dead silent, and there's no noise at all. So I'm hoping for the best.

I don't really need to control these with Apex, other than on/off. I'll have the return on the Apex Jr.'s eb4 outlet, but the skimmer/reactor VarioS S-2 pump will just be on a powerstrip. I'm saving the last outlet I have for my algae reactor light (turning it off if things get too hot).

I'm considering getting an eb4 or even an eb8 to control:
1. Heater
2. Chiller
3. Return pump
4. Reactor/Chiller pump
5. Algae reactor lights
6. Skimmer pump
7. Gyre pump

- I'll probably also eventually get an auto feeder. Then my Apex would turn off the return and skimmer pumps, feed, and then turn on the return and skimmer pumps again. Good for when I'm not in town (which will be often)
- I want to control the algae reactor lights to be opposite of my AI Hydra, so a simple time based on/off would work here. I will also have a heat failsafe, so if the heat gets too much (like beyond chiller ability) I will shut off the reactor lights
- If leaks are detected, I'll probably have everything except the gyre pump stopped and an alarm sent. If anything, I have a nest cam that I can look through or call someone to go over and check. The gyre pump should keep things alive for a bit.

An extra FMM module from my ATK for a total of:
1. PMUP
2. ATK sensor low
3. ATK sensor high
4. LD-2 leak probe (in cabinet)
5. LD-2 leak probe (behind cabinet on floor)
6. Solenoid to refill 5 gallon ATO reservoir
7. OS-1 optical sensor for ATO reservoir low

 

[Clayton Jessup]

This looks like a amazing build I am following this! [emoji16]

 

[kinetic]

This looks like a amazing build I am following this! [emoji16]

Thanks for following along!

Pumps Update
I successfully swapped out my Skimz QP 4.0 and 2.0 pumps out for Octopus VarioS-4 and 2 pumps. The noise difference is incredible. When people said dead silent, they weren't kidding. I think the VarioS-4 is actually quieter than the 2. I'm now running the S-4 at just the second power setting (about 410gph). I think at the third power setting for my return, it was a little too much. I might eventually get a breakout box for my Apex Jr. and try to tune the pump to about 520gph as recommended by Red Sea. Not sure if that's even possible.

Skimmer Update
I was having a little trouble with getting my Simplicity 120 DC skimmer water level high enough, but after some tinkering and disassembling and reassembling, it's good. But now that my Skimz pumps are out, the skimmer is louder than I'd like. Since VarioS are so great, I'm thinking of replacing the Simplicity with the Regal 150SSS that has the VarioS-2 pump.
https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/regal-150sss-6-space-saving-protein-skimmer-varios-reef-octopus.html

It's rated to 100 gallons, so I'm afraid it will be way too oversized. Maybe I can run the pump low and it will work?

Algae Reactor Update
Aquamaxx XL reactor, aluminum square tube (19" tall, 5.75" wide), and red/blue grow LED lights are in. I haven't plumbed it yet. The aluminum is sucking up all the heat, but it's not dissipating the heat. I ordered heatsinks (5"x8") to put on two of the walls, and a little fan to blow over it. I think that'll be it for my Algae Reactor endeavors. If that still doesn't work at keeping heat down, I'm just going to get a PAX ARID, since this will almost cost as much

Cycle
My tank seems to be fully cycled! I can dose 2ppm of ammonia, and in 12 hours my ammonia drops to 0, nitrites to 0. I did a 16 gallon water change yesterday to try to drop my nitrAtes down from 50ppm. I'll test today. I may need to do one more 16 gallon water change to take down the nitrates again, but I plan to keep dosing ammonia for awhile... so might hold off for a week.

 

[kinetic]

I was hoping to take some photos with this update, but I'll have to post them tomorrow.

Pumps dB test
Used iPhone app:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/decibel-meter-pro-measure-noise-level-in-db/id1227650795?mt=8

Room ambiant noise: 45 dB
Cabinet ambiant noise: 45 dB

• VarioS-2 only: 45 dB
• VarioS-4 only: 45 dB
• Both on: 45-46 dB (flickering between the two)

Note: The pumps are on power level 3. I tried ramping both up to 100%, and the dB still flickered around 45-46 dB. So no real change in noise. These pumps are incredible. Sure it's just an iPhone app, so maybe not the most accurate, but this was pretty impressive. My ears agree.

Skimmer Update
I disassembled and reassembled the skimmer per @Simplicity Aquatics suggestion through email (they have really great customer service, btw) to try to get the water level up. I think tweaking it helped, and I can now get the water level pretty much into the cup! Success! I have to close the wedge pipe pretty much all the way, but at least it gets there. The only problem is, I think the pump is pretty loud and there's a slight rattle. The rattle happens a lot more when the wedge pipe is closed. Anyway, working through it with Simplicity, I'm sure we'll figure out something. I'm hoping they can take a dB test of their own copies of the skimmer to see if my pump is just messed up.

With skimmer on only at power level 3: 57 dB. With the skimmer power all the way up it reaches more than 60 dB (maybe around 62). I get that there's a lot of air noise, but to be honest, the silencer does an amazing job on that and the air noise is almost nothing. The pump, however, is the loudest thing. It actually sounds about as loud as my Skimz pumps I used to have (which was too much and replaced by the VarioS).

Crossing my fingers this is just a bad copy of the pump and maybe I can get it replaced.

Algae reactor update
Got two heatsinks, used a bunch of thermal paste and some JB Weld to attach securely to the aluminum tube. Photos tomorrow! I should also have some super clean chaeto from ReefCleaners coming on Wednesday.

Cycle
All cycled. 4 days in a row, I can dose 2ppm of ammonia and the levels drop to 0 ammonia 0 nitrites in 10 hours (maybe even earlier, since I haven't tested any closer). My nitrates were at 50ppm, but after two 50% water changes, I'm down to 10ppm. Tomorrow an anemone is getting delivered I'm going to put it in a QT for half a day and see how it looks. If it looks like it needs treatment, I'll start cipro. It's only a BTA so I think it should be fine and will probably just get acclimated and go into the tank. Pretty excited to finally have something alive in there.

No clean up crew yet, I don't have much in terms of algae. The beauty of cycling with dead/dry rock and sand. I do have a lot of film of stuff on the glass, but it's fairly transparent and easily removed with a flipper magnet.

Photos tomorrow of all the equipment updates and nem!

 

[TonapahNorth]

Looks very nice