New Swiss 1900 liter (500G) Build

[Lasse]

for some reason the Profilux cannot manage a 0-10v output based on humidity so I had to use the temp probe.

I´m not sure - but I think you are wrong. In order to lower the humidity - I´ll think you can use a 1-10V based on humidity. Chose the L port you are going to use for your 1-10 V managed fan - in my case - I chose L 12. Put in your nominal value and in this case - the hysteresis will determine the 1-10 V signal. In the case below - actual 33.5 % Nominal Value 29 and hysteresis 4 - it is 6,4 V output. It is not really linear - you have to test a little

The output at different hysteresis

​

This video show hoe it changes in voltage. Look at L12 and at humidity

Its from my control cabinet and it is lower humidity (caused of higher temperature) than in the room. Therefore the crazy % of humidity

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Laith]

I´m not sure - but I think you are wrong. In order to lower the humidity - I´ll think you can use a 1-10V based on humidity. Chose the L port you are going to use for your 1-10 V managed fan - in my case - I chose L 12. Put in your nominal value and in this case - the hysteresis will determine the 1-10 V signal. In the case below - actual 33.5 % Nominal Value 29 and hysteresis 4 - it is 6,4 V output. It is not really linear - you have to test a little

The output at different hysteresis

​

This video show hoe it changes in voltage. Look at L12 and at humidity

Its from my control cabinet and it is lower humidity (caused of higher temperature) than in the room. Therefore the crazy % of humidity

Sincerely Lasse

Lasse, many thanks for this!

I'm pretty sure that when I set up the tank it wasn't possible to do this. If I remember correctly, the Humidity probe was not even an option in the 0-10v panel.

And in my discussion with Matthias at GHL about the Mitras issue, he answered my question about using the humidity levels to control the 0-10v by saying "I don't think this is possible".

Ok, I've now set the nominal value for humidity at 45% with a hysteresis of 5% and I'll see how it goes. If this works well I'll save some money for the separate humidity sensor the ventilation guy was going to install!

I owe you a beer!

 

[Lasse]

I have not tested this in RL - but very interested if it works - please let me know. If you can use outside air into the canopy - it will have more effect (not in august - but now)

Sincerely Lasse

 

[MrStoffel]

So I decided to order two new shafts and see if that would help. When I received them, surprise surprise: the manufacturer has changed the design of the shaft!

Here is the new one (left) next to the original:

A closer look at the new one:

They have added o-rings to both ends of the shaft, I assume to keep them from slipping out of the housing?

Hey Man,
I have one of both designs, purchased a year appart.
Unfortunately the new design is also not good in my opinion.
After the third cleaning, the smallest white o-ring was allready broken during disassembly.
It makes sense, since the material is silicon and not nbr like the other red and green orings...
Another flawed design imho...
Like you said, tunze is the way to go, i think i will ditch my gyre's in favor of tunze soon.

 

[Laith]

Sorry for the silence... life has gotten in the way again!

Just a quick note to say that the reason I haven't given any feedback on the GHL ION Director is because I still haven't had the time to install it .

And the main reason for that is that it will be quite a bit of work as at the same time I need to install extra Switchbars so lots of rewiring in the system.

And I've found that one of the drawbacks of planning and implementing a very tidy cable management system is that it makes changing things around more complicated!

 

[Laith]

The new style motor shafts of the Gyres are making a big difference:

- They haven't stopped running once since the new motor shafts were installed.
- As far as I can tell (very subjective), the output efficiency has not diminished much.
- Because the new shafts don't start slipping out of their housing, there is no longer the frequent noise issues that I had previously.

So they need less frequent maintenance; previously about every month one or the other of the Gyres would stop and need to be taken apart and the motor shaft pushed back into place.

For the moment, they're not being binned .

So for anyone that has Gyres (at least the 350s) and has been having the same issues, give these new motor shafts a try. I think Maxspect should have replaced them for free but in any case they are worth the switch.

 

[Laith]

I was looking through some of my FTS and found these three which are interesting...

October 2019, tank first set up:

May of 2021:

March 2022:

It's difficult to visualize the progression of a tank without pictures of the tank over time!

 

[Laith]

So I may be the only dufus who hadn't realized this or I just didn't notice:

The other day I decided to clean and calibrate the GHL dosing pumphead that doses my Balling light carbonate solution. This for two reasons:

- It had been ten months since I had done it.
- My Profilux was consistently indicating that I had a lot less carbonate solution remaining in my dosing reservoir than I actually had... by quite a bit.

So I assumed that the calibration had gone off and the Profilux was thinking it was dosing more than it actually was.

So I took the rollers off of the pump head and decided to replace the rollers and cover completely with new ones as the rollers had a lot of wear and tear. Then I took the outlet tube that delivers the carbonate to the sump off of the pump and took a look at it: it had several locations where sediment (carbonate precipitate?) had pretty much blocked the tube, certain sections had two or three centimeters of this sediment.

I regularly removed the build up of carbonate crystals at the end of the tube on the sump side but could not see these blockages as the rest of the tube was out of sight. And I didn't imagine that there would be a reason for this type of buildup in a tube that has liquid pumped through it once an hour every day. And whenever I did happen to look at the end of the tube when the pump was dosing there was carbonate liquid dripped into the sump.

So I cleaned all that out so that the tube was completely clear and then reassembled and calibrated the dosing pump. My assumption was that now that the dosing pump was delivering more than it was previously that I would need to decrease the daily dosing to maintain my KH setting of 8 (managed by the KH Director).

But it has been three days since and the KH reading has remained steady and the KH Director has not had to adjust the dosing by any significant amount .

Puzzling as in theory now the hourly dosing amounts should have increased compared to when the tube was partially clogged...

Oh well, I'll wait and see what happens.

 

[Laith]

I'm also upgrading my exhaust fan above the tank (see issues previously discussed) to one that is more powerful but that will run more silently at high speeds since the diameter of the output (and hence the diameter of the fan) will be larger: needs to turn slower to move the same amount of air.

Initially this will just replace the current unit (need to enlarge the hole in the outside wall) and I will monitor the humidity and see if there is improvement without installing ducting to take air from directly over the tank. Currently I have managed to keep the humidity at 50-55% most of the time with peaks of 60-62% at certain times. But to do this the current unit runs at full speed a lot of the time and the noise is getting annoying.

If I can keep the humidity below 60% consistently with the new unit with a lot less noise (these units are almost silent until they need to run at 80% or more of their max output) without installing the ducting that would be great.

 

[Lasse]

So I may be the only dufus who hadn't realized this or I just didn't notice:

The other day I decided to clean and calibrate the GHL dosing pumphead that doses my Balling light carbonate solution. This for two reasons:

- It had been ten months since I had done it.
- My Profilux was consistently indicating that I had a lot less carbonate solution remaining in my dosing reservoir than I actually had... by quite a bit.

So I assumed that the calibration had gone off and the Profilux was thinking it was dosing more than it actually was.

So I took the rollers off of the pump head and decided to replace the rollers and cover completely with new ones as the rollers had a lot of wear and tear. Then I took the outlet tube that delivers the carbonate to the sump off of the pump and took a look at it: it had several locations where sediment (carbonate precipitate?) had pretty much blocked the tube, certain sections had two or three centimeters of this sediment.

I regularly removed the build up of carbonate crystals at the end of the tube on the sump side but could not see these blockages as the rest of the tube was out of sight. And I didn't imagine that there would be a reason for this type of buildup in a tube that has liquid pumped through it once an hour every day. And whenever I did happen to look at the end of the tube when the pump was dosing there was carbonate liquid dripped into the sump.

So I cleaned all that out so that the tube was completely clear and then reassembled and calibrated the dosing pump. My assumption was that now that the dosing pump was delivering more than it was previously that I would need to decrease the daily dosing to maintain my KH setting of 8 (managed by the KH Director).

But it has been three days since and the KH reading has remained steady and the KH Director has not had to adjust the dosing by any significant amount .

Puzzling as in theory now the hourly dosing amounts should have increased compared to when the tube was partially clogged...

Oh well, I'll wait and see what happens.

If you use the KH director for management the KH - it will automatically adjust for lower flow per pump stroke with longer pumping time because its react to a real figure - the KH it reads. When you clean the tube and get more out per pump stroke it will automatically lower the pump time. If you not have had an automatically adjustment and instead adjust you pump time manually after manually taken KH - you should get an huge over dosing if you not adjust pump time the same time - IMO

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Laith]

If you use the KH director for management the KH - it will automatically adjust for lower flow per pump stroke with longer pumping time because its react to a real figure - the KH it reads. When you clean the tube and get more out per pump stroke it will automatically lower the pump time. If you not have had an automatically adjustment and instead adjust you pump time manually after manually taken KH - you should get an huge over dosing if you not adjust pumping time the same time - IMO

Sincerely Lasse

I deliberately did not adjust the set dosing amount (37ml every hour) for that very reason: I did not want to interfere with the KHD managing things and I assumed that it would start decreasing the dosing amount because logically (I think) the KH would now go up.

On the other hand, prior to the maintenance the KH was consistently showing around 7.6 or 7.7 while the set point was 8. So maybe the partial blockage was preventing the KHD from adjusting correctly to get to 8. Since three days now the KH has been steady at 7.8 with the KHD adapting by +10%.

So perhaps it will slowly reach 8…

 

[Laith]

If you use the KH director for management the KH - it will automatically adjust for lower flow per pump stroke with longer pumping time because its react to a real figure - the KH it reads. When you clean the tube and get more out per pump stroke it will automatically lower the pump time. If you not have had an automatically adjustment and instead adjust you pump time manually after manually taken KH - you should get an huge over dosing if you not adjust pumping time the same time - IMO

Sincerely Lasse

And as usual Lasse, your helpful input is always welcome!

 

[Laith]

Wow, more than two years since my last post and update...

Time just flies when one is busy.

Tank is doing great, corals are taking over, fish are fat and happy.

I won't promise an update... but if I find some time (and time to take some pics!).

Hope everyone is well!

 

[Dread Pirate Dave]

And a video of the tank.

This is such an awesome tank. I may have to consider SPS for a Chromis home.

Just curious, about how much time do you think you spend on maintenance, weekly?

 

[Laith]

This is such an awesome tank. I may have to consider SPS for a Chromis home.

Just curious, about how much time do you think you spend on maintenance, weekly?

I clean the glass every two or three days. The rest averages out to maybe two to three hours a week. Every three to six months I spend more time cleaning pumps etc.