What's your best Modification?

[Tjakes680]

I kinda like the way my DIY reef breeders light hangers turned out.

As a plumber I love that hanger looks amazing Do the spickets work or just for looks either way awesome

 

[Tjakes680]

My AWC/Skimmer cup flusher. I drilled a hole on the top of my skimmer cup lid and inserted a standard 360° lawn sprinkler nozzle. A "shrub" adapter converts the threads to standard NPT, then a hose nipple. This connects to a PMUP in the last sump chamber that pumps/sprays water into my skimmer cup when activated. The water flushes the skimmer cup and overflows into the waste canister. The waste canister has optical sensors (high/low) and a PMUP to the house plumbing waste drain. The last sump chamber has an ATK unit plus a high and low optical sensor. I have a 20 gallon roto-molded tank mixed with new salt water. It has a PMUP into the sump and high/low sensors also. Basically what happens is between 9-11pm it waits for the ATO to run (so the level is proper). After that it pumps/sprays tank water into my skimmer cup and flushes it out. It does this until the lower sensor on the ATK opens (which works out to about a gallon based on my sump final chamber size). During the drain/flush the skimmer waste canister is pumping the old tank water+filth out to the city sewer. Then the fresh salt water is pumped in to replace what was drained. After about 20 days I get an alarm that my salt mix tank is empty. I flip a physical switch (breakout input) to turn the AWC off, push a button to trigger a fill solenoid from RODI. When it's close to full I add a specific amount of salt by weight and start a mix powerhead. After a day I turn the AWC switch back on, turn off the mix pump and I'm good for another 3 weeks. It took quite a bit of testing/tuning, and I simulated and programmed for any failure mode I could conceive. I love that I don't have to dump skimmate or smell it when it's getting full in the canister. Plus my skimmer stays pretty clean this way and I only clean it every 3 months or so.

Sounds amazing can you possibly please post a video of all of theis in action would love to see it working must have been crazy fine tunning and getting everything exact

 

[Diznaster]

Sounds amazing can you possibly please post a video of all of theis in action would love to see it working must have been crazy fine tunning and getting everything exact

I've been meaning to do that, I'll try to do it next time I have my skimmer cleaning so I can show those parts. Tuning honestly wasn't that bad, I got some great programming advice on the Neptune forum. I was pretty green with Apex programming at that point, so I beat my head on the desk a bit. Should be able to duplicate it a lot easier now.

 

[bigdrew]

One of the the “teeth” on my black overflow cover cracked off. I was losing fish to the overflow constantly...I cut a 2” piece of PVC pipe long ways, bent it a little open and slid the PVC over one of the other teeth, fully covering the large gap between the teeth due to the broken tooth. Haven’t lost a fish to the overflow since!

Sorry for the horrible picture, but here it is: the “tooth” that broke was the back one. By using PVC, it still allows the water to pass “under/through” it, but it stops a fish (flame hawk, to be specific. That little punk!) from getting through.

This would also work on a middle section, as the PVC is as wide as my “teeth.” One would probably just want to get black or blue PVC.

This PVC is hidden behind my return nozzle and is right at the water line, so it can’t be seen from the front of the display tank.

 

[bigdrew]

Hi, my best modification would have to be my filter sock replacement, into the sump, besides getting dirty quickly the noise from the down pipe into was a no no for me, so I came up with a drinks bottle filter. So first I drilled some holes at the base of the bottle for drainage. I adapted a rubber cap to the end of the down pipe so I can easily connect and disconnect the bottle from for easy access to do maintenance. For the media to go inside I used a coarse round shaped black filter foam at the base, a filter bag of Fluval media on top of that and a rolled up black coarse filter foam in the inside top of the bottle. Now if the filter bottle was ever to get blocked up of gunge I drill an overflow hole near the top of the bottle so the water can drop back into the sump.
Now the advantages of having this bottle filter, it’s a lot quieter from the down pipe into the sump, you can put any filter bags in, wether you use carbon media or phosphate media entirely up to you, I also place bio bacteria balls inside the filter bottle every two weeks. The media foam I found the best is the coarser ones, the water flows through better, you just have to experiment a bit. Also you don’t have to change your filter bottle as often as the sock filter, weekly maintenance is what I do and you just rinse your foam, your filter bags once a month or as and when your water quality is affected. Here are some Picts and hope it gives people ideas. Oh if you are wondering where my skimmer cup is in the last picture, I took it off so you could see the filter bottle hooked up.

This is really creative. I’ve been looking for a solution to the same issues you identified and solved with this.

What did you use for the rubber connector/cap on the drain line to connect the bottle?

 

[Jay Z]

Mine would be my PRP. Pod relocation pump.

Kept having 100’s of them in the first chamber of my sump and got sick of losing them to my socks.

Put 4 inches of reef ruble in my first chamber with a sicce micro underneath it in the corner they kept hanging out in. Sucks them from that into my sump display, some go into the return pump and dump into my other 3 tanks.



Second is my ducted ac into my equipment cabinet, salt mix tank kept running warm on me 90+ degrees (simplicity return pump inside). Now she stays at 78 the whole time

Have brown noctua fans coming to replace the black one.

 

[Cherie cook]

I made a battery backup that is automatic and maintains itself.

runs for about 8 hours, enough to keep everything going in case of an emergency

Could you elaborate a bit on how you did this...it sounds awesome!

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Amazing , all of them. Thanks comrades

 

[Auto-pilot]

Could you elaborate a bit on how you did this...it sounds awesome!

Yeah I made a thread a while ago.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/battery-backup.533686/
Esentually it's a deep cycle battery with a maintainer on it. When the source voltage from the wall de energizes, the relays loose power and close circuits that connect the inverter to the battery and the plug. Simply it keeps everything plugged into it going. When power comes back on the relays energise disconnecting the inverter and reconnecting the wall power to the plug on the box

 

[Victor Noda]

I'm curious about this. What tank are you running this skimmer on and do you have any pictures of it in action?

It's an Oceanic 29 Gallon Biocube with a 8 gallon Eshopps Nano Refugium. Keeps my nitrates at 1.5 ppm no matter how much we feed the tank. And yeah, we feed the tank...a lot.

 

[Victor Noda]

What did u do with the toaster?

Hahaha...Fish sandwich anyone? Eeeooowww...that was bad! Sorry folks!

 

[Victor Noda]

Not sure if I would consider this a Mod, but I thought I would share it anyways. Waterproof rare earth magnets, some E6000 Glue, and these little snack trays we got from Costco! Wahla...moveable interlocking Frag stands!

 

[Victor Noda]

Okay...next I'm going to at tempt an automatic toilet flusher for the bottom of my Refugium based on a fiber filled Aqueon Cannister Water Filter I happen to have lying around, possibly a spray bar, and some kind of return...all to fit in a space that's only 1" wide...hmmmm...this might be tricky!

 

[Flippers4pups]

Flippers world famous "heater hanger"! Lol

 

[BeejReef]

I kinda like the way my DIY reef breeders light hangers turned out.

very steampunk!

 

[Lorenzo Angotti]

This is really creative. I’ve been looking for a solution to the same issues you identified and solved with this.

What did you use for the rubber connector/cap on the drain line to connect the bottle?

I got it from the plumbing section of my B & Q store, something similar you can get is a Flexible Rubber Reducers Pipe Drainage - Flexible Adaptors Rubber Boots you can get them all sizes and these come with jubilee clips see pict.

 

[saltyhog]

I took some parts made by AI and made my own light mount for my AI Vegas...now converted to Hydra52's

 

[Victor Noda]

I turned this OXO Container into my ATO reservoir tank.

 

[Kodock]

I currently live in a 1960’s home in the historic district, so the faucets are weird and the washer and dryer are within the carport. This was the most convenient option. This is the spare bathroom. Disregard the ugly tile and wallpaper, it has been renovated since the pic was taken. You can take a shower and fill up your rodi at the same time, kidding, water pressure, never tried though, rambling.

 

[Reefer Reboot]

With a 36" deep tank it can be hard to do maintenance on the bottom. So when my GSP started to grow up the front of the tank I made this long pizza cutter like tool. Now it takes just a couple minutes to trim back.