Kyle's Reef

[Kyl]

velcro_strap_bracket by Kyl, on Flickr

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velcro_straps by Kyl, on Flickr

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velcro_strap_bracket_prototype_sizing by Kyl, on Flickr

It might not look like much and a with a lower print quality with prototyping settings, but I'm kicking myself for not doing this type of thing long ago. These are going to make cable management much easier for the power cords. Working on a universal (to a point), power brick mount using the same tie straps next, there's like 7 bricks to secure .

The rest of the cabinet is almost done, some final construction for the dosing vessel platform and then routing all the wiring and tubing remains. Dug out my old airline clips and need to make a surface mount version that will hold them in place but allow them to be snapped out easily. I'm hiding most of the electronics behind the false wall except for the return and gyre for now, possibly the ATO as well. To keep things somewhat reasonable the tubing will have to be removed , vessel moved, etc to access the power area for the future, but how often do you need to plug or unplug something manually in the age of controllers.

 

[Kyl]

Getting there..


cabinet_out by Kyl, on Flickr


How my mind works..


cabinet_front_plans by Kyl, on Flickr



cabinet_layout by Kyl, on Flickr


cabinet_hidden_yuck by Kyl, on Flickr


cabinet_shaping_up by Kyl, on Flickr

 

[Kyl]

cabinet_layout_ato by Kyl, on Flickr


cabinet_ups_cover by Kyl, on Flickr


cabinet_hidden_panel by Kyl, on Flickr


cabinet_vessel by Kyl, on Flickr


cabinet_exhaust_controller by Kyl, on Flickr

 

[Kyl]

Good fit for RO tubing, though unable to be un-clipped with this rough build, love prototyping on this printer so far. Need to scale it a bit to capture 3/16" python airline tubing I'm using for my dosing lines, and make the 'snap' ability of it function properly. Made a dual tubing clip to hold my dos lines almost two years ago, thankfully I still had the design to build off of in fusion360 still.


dosing_clip_slice by Kyl, on Flickr


dosing_clip_prototyping by Kyl, on Flickr

End goal is to have a 5x line bracket for 4 dosing tubes with the fifth being the ATO line, which is slightly larger diameter.

 

[Kyl]

Spent most of the afternoon working on the bracket designs, to the point the fitment and most importantly the detach ability of the lines is spot on.


I'm always amazed at everything that goes into the 3D printers to make them to the point we're at now. I can barely hear it operating over the background noise of my tanks for the most part. Hoping to get these done and installed this evening, then set to work on the best way to design the power brick mounts.

 

[Kyl]

[Enable French voice from Spongebob]
/say Two hours later..
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bracket_print_finished by Kyl, on Flickr

Success!

bracket_success by Kyl, on Flickr

 

[MrWheelock]

Those dosing bracket are awesome!

 

[Kyl]

Thanks! Took a bit longer than I had liked to remember how to use Fusion 360, still awful at it... but it works! Hard to get the right balance of snap-in ability and snap-out, especially for the ATO. If I have to access the rear panel, I'll need to un-do both of those clip lines. Easy - peasy. Tunze lines have always bothered me with my tanks, there was really no easy way to combine them together with a clip as the tubing and wiring size is different, and it tended to do the corkscrew twisting thing.

 

[Kyl]

Almost done, at least the ATO can be put back online and the dosing is now on the P4.


90% done by Kyl, on Flickr


behind_false_wall by Kyl, on Flickr


clips by Kyl, on Flickr

Still need to figure out how I want to deal with the return, gyre and ATO controllers. Place them behind the wall, in the spaces the ATO container isn't, or even possibly mount them on the cabinet door. I intend to leave the space next to the P4 open for future expansion.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Almost done, at least the ATO can be put back online and the dosing is now on the P4.


90% done by Kyl, on Flickr


behind_false_wall by Kyl, on Flickr


clips by Kyl, on Flickr

Still need to figure out how I want to deal with the return, gyre and ATO controllers. Place them behind the wall, in the spaces the ATO container isn't, or even possibly mount them on the cabinet door. I intend to leave the space next to the P4 open for future expansion.

Looks so clean and sleek!

 

[Kyl]

Other side of that false wall, not so clean or sleek, yet..

 

[Kyl]

About that not so clean or sleek back area, may be much cleaner come this weekend..


brick_bracket_wip7 by Kyl, on Flickr


brick_bracket_wip9 by Kyl, on Flickr


brick_bracket_wip10 by Kyl, on Flickr


brick_bracket_wip11 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

[Kyl]

Been an interesting couple of weeks..

Lost the pintail, it has been on it's way out for a while I think, looking progressively more ragged, not really eating much and the last time I saw it, having trouble swimming. I chalk this up to old age, there hasn't been any shown aggression since adding to the DT beyond a day or so when the leopard transitioned. It was a vibrant male when I picked him up last year, so maybe it was just time..

Brackets are mostly done, wiring still needs to be routed when some larger conduit arrives, and I'm waiting on a 5.5 x 2.5mm splitter so I can run all of my A160's off a single 19v power supply. Cut down on the bricks, and then I won't have to split outlets. Otherwise it's been sourcing some right angle adapters, foot long extensions to the bar to just get footage clutter out of the rear.


bit_less_yuck by Kyl, on Flickr

One success to report, previously the COR and gyre bricks were rather hot to the touch, now with the constant airflow through that rear partition, they are cool to the touch even after being on all day. Definitely going to be doing the airflow through power brick areas in future builds.

The frag tank is still waiting for the zenreef stuff.. and I'm really running out of room with some of the softies up top. The glass sump I had made has a large "refugium" / rock area, and I got the idea a few days ago to re-purose the mothballed black box I had from the tank, and run it over that sump compartment. It was initially hard to figure out a way to mount it without drilling holes / screws up towards the tank, or give enough clearance for the light to not hang down too much. Had some aluminum U channel from other projects, and some brainstorming and a re-start or two saw success tonight:


expanded_sump by Kyl, on Flickr

Will move down all the zoa/palys tomorrow along with the critter keeper, still housing the candycane pistol shrimp, for now. Planning to pick up some new sticks, a space invader pectinia and sherman BTA this coming week, so definately need the room.

 

[Kyl]

A couple new additions today:


space_invader_pectinia by Kyl, on Flickr

And a Sherman BTA, but it's still a bit annoyed from the trip home. Zenreef stuff came in yesterday, I've been able to get rid of half the egg crate, the critter keeper and mounted some more small colonies to tiles. All the zoas have been put in the sump for now, things are working out very well. Took some shots with the frag rack installed and these unknown acros are staring to get some crazy colours:


unknown_acros1 by Kyl, on Flickr


unknown_acros2 by Kyl, on Flickr

I don't know what they are, both were green with a bit of purple blobs when I got them, but pinks, yellows and brighter greens are coming out now.

And because I love the look of it, the trachy lately has been inflating to almost 7" across:


trachy_october by Kyl, on Flickr

 

[Kyl]

And we're a bit over six weeks of KH Director being dialed in use. Very happy with it thus far, though it did take some fiddling to get dialed in. Currently running 4x a day, earlier was every four hours. The random 6 dKH reading was after playing with the sample tube routing and forgetting to update the tubing length, the next manual test after updating the figures it was back to normal. Noticed as well when I was installing the zenreef line holder there was a bit of build up on the tubing of the alk, to the point it was probably barely keeping up with use, since correcting that yesterday now the reading is slowly rising.

I love that trend points are apparent and it correlates to certain events taking place. At the start of this period I was at about 16ml / day of ESV B-Ionic, now it's currently 23ml / day, so a solid uptake to keep around 8 dKH. As I get more comfortable with this, the adaptive control may be turned on, but not yet.


kh_director_results_1month by Kyl, on Flickr

 

[Kyl]

Slowly coming together..


cabinet_progress by Kyl, on Flickr

 

[JoshH]

Slowly coming together..


cabinet_progress by Kyl, on Flickr

Looking fantastic so far! ! ! I'm going to need some of those brackets and line holders from you at somepoint

 

[Kyl]

First, a shot of the Sherman. It's settled next to the "green" BTA that I bought a few months ago , but looking happy and healthy.


sherman_bta by Kyl, on Flickr

Now, to the business. It's no secret that my frag system hasn't had the best run of things. It's coming up on almost two years of operation and equipment has come and gone, nutrients have ranged from zilch to almost zilch, almost everything and anything other than an outright crash has taken place.

For the last five or so weeks I've started making use of some products I've always had and just 'kinda dabbled with when remembering, and I think the results are starting to show. I'm sure that getting alkalintiy back in check and pretty well stable is also a large part to this, but I'm seeing revitalized growth and colour coming back to some SPS pieces that have done nothing for months or tens of months, even before the alkalinity issues had taken place this past summer.

Twice weekly there is 10ML of acropower, 1/2 TSP of reefroids and 20 or so drops of phytofeast being added to the tank. I've set the return to shut off for 30 minutes, the skimmer for 6 hours and let it blast around the tank as a particulate storm, hitting everything. Stagnant pieces are now showing highlights of growth, colour shading is returning, quite quickly in some cases. It doesn't look like much, but acros that looked like they got hit with an acid bath at least haven't died, and are recovering.


bonsai_encrusting by Kyl, on Flickr
The bonsai frag plug that I pulled it off of 9 months ago has shown more growth in the last three weeks than those 30+ previous.


unknown_greenie_first_new_colours by Kyl, on Flickr

I can't remember what this is, but it was saved from STN and is gaining some orange / pink growth.


pink_mille_new_life by Kyl, on Flickr

This hasn't had any growth in a year, to the point half of it had died and I threw it on there as a last attempt. The green is encrusting growth, which I haven't seen since it hit the tank.


orange_passion_RTN_remnants by Kyl, on Flickr

This was eraser sized pieces of a 1.5" orange passion that survived RTN. That's on a frag tile that has not done anything for about 7 months, now it's encrusting very quickly.


pinky_dinky_recovery by Kyl, on Flickr

The worst of my acros from the first alk crash this summer. It looked like someone dipped the small vibrant colony in a vat of acid, there was barely any skin pigment, no polyp extension, just a near-dead acro. Now it's gaining polyps, "skin", and the corallites are starting to gain fluoresce again. And it's encrusting, something that hasn't happened in almost a year as well.

 

[Kyl]

Not a whole lot to update. My splitter arrived from China, and great, they shipped a 5.5mm x 2.1mm, instead of 5.5mm x 2.5mm. Working with the seller, I don't really want to wait another 50 days and chance another mix up since they can't really seem to see what the problem was. So I got fed up and hit the electronics store today. It's not pretty, but actually I'm going to mount it under the cabinet the lights are hung off of so it can be an easy access, plus I can access the fuse easier should it trip.


splitter2 by Kyl, on Flickr

Lights have been running for about 6 hours on the new 19v 8a power brick, it's luke warm if that versus the kessil bricks that each were hot to the touch. Win win, and frees up two power brick slots.

Tanks are continuing to chug along, the frag tank is dealing with nitrate bottoming out again which I can only attribute to spurts of growth from all the SPS in there. I did pick up a group of barnacles from the LFS for the starry blenny eventually, and some cyphastrea to grow over them as I saw someone do with montiporas. Also picked up a large frag of RR Pink Cadillac that broke off while he was cleaning, 25 bucks for about a 2" wide, multi-branch chunk.

Plans for the short term are to print and mount the new Kessil A160 mega-brick, install a couple of IceCap 1k gyres in the frag tank and try to sell some of this apex gear that's now collecting dust.

 

[Kyl]

Through un-clean glass and the rear of the tank, but Mr. Grumpy is happy in his abode.


grumpy by Kyl, on Flickr