kaykay

Pods!! Found white dots on the tank glass. I thought they were dirt. Turns out, these dots are moving randomly in different directions. Yeah.

I have not used an internal filter before, so I won't understand the structure enough to comment. However, I think it is very possible, provided the media are bagged individually within the filter. Bros correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks for the advice. I think I might have packed them too tight this time round. Next round I'll pack less of each for more surface contact of each medium particle with the water. The water flows thru carbon first, then resin. But how can I know if which medium has exhausted? I was thinking that as soon as I'm not able to get 0ppm, I'll replace both media at the same time.

Thanks bro. Not possible without your advice. Haha, I wouldn't want to go through the 5 cartons again. I'm not young anymore lol.. The shoppers were giving me strange looks at the Fairprice outlet too. They must be thinking I'm stocking up water getting ready for famine. Or for war. Haha..

Hi. Bulk order thread is opened. Do support to help reduce shipping charges. Thanks.

Found it. Thanks for the fast reply. Thread closed.

DIY Project 3. Getting pure, clean water. I was contemplating buying cartons of distilled water for top ups and for salt mix. Maybe even a delivery system. Looking at my needs of 14L for top up and 10L for weekly 10% water change, I'll need to buy 16 x 1.5L bottles of "Life Water" per week, or around 5 cartons (5x12x1.5L) per month. The mathematics is about $30 per month of water. I have not forgotten the chore of lugging 5 cartons of such water back home last month to fill the tank. Haha, I bought the wrong brand somemore. It was the first time I'm buying distilled water for fish tanks.. Paiseh... Was talking to fellow reefer Marcuss, and he recommended doing a DIY distillation of water. So this is what I did. 1. Cut he base off a rigid water bottle and make holes with a heated fork. 2. Stuff a filter bag of activated carbon and resin respectively, and squash them between 2 small pcs of filter floss in the bottle. 3. Invert the base into the bottle to hold everything in place securely. 4. Try to fit the outflow of a small water pump to the mouth piece of the bottle. I had to use 3 pcs of Eheim hose of ascending sizes to fit the pump. Haha. 5. Fill up a tub with tap water, and run the pump through the bottle for a few hours. The pump is only 400L/hr. 6. Then test for tds. Yeah. 7. I kept this water in 1.5L bottles for topping up the top up. Hehe. Note: My raw tap water is measured at 47ppm. I got this TDS pen only 4 days after I prepared the tub of water. Surprisingly, water can be kept 0ppm even after 4 days. I wonder how many more days can it be kept?

You may want to take a salinity reading now. If it's too high, reduce it gradually via water changes ya..

Ya. I reckon I should too. I actually started a BO thread. Upon sending, the pop up message mentions that the admin will release the thread in due course (or something like this). Still waiting now. Can't wait to get the new lighting.. Lol

Yup will collate more photos of this before I post. Perhaps a teaser first..

Any idea how long it takes to get a bulk order posting approved?

DIY Project 2. "Auto Top-up" Due to the use of a fan, evaporation will be a major part of fluctuating parameters, especially salinity, in a small tank. The evaporation rate is almost 2L per day during the hot days last 2 weeks! 2L out of 90L is more than 2% swings. I got a square-ish bottle from daiso. Punched a hole 1" above the base. This is for precipitation to settle as I'll be mixing some "Brightwell Elemental Reef Builder" powder to DI water in this bottle. Drilled another small hole on the cap for air intake. Insert one end of an air regulator with air tube into the hole. You may silicon to prevent leakage, but the hole fits perfectly. Then tune the regulator to drip every 5-10seconds. Then monitor the water level after a few hours and make adjustments appropriately. A video of my drip rate. http://m.youtube.com/my_videos#/watch?v=GAe8-98pnlY The setup looks like this. Top view. I secured the bottle to a spare pc of acrylic I have lying around with cable tie, and inserted it between a baffle plate to hold the bottle in position. Unfortunately I punched the hole too near the return up pipe. So I had to do an extension of the regulator to access it easily. Cheers.

Cable management. Some very primitive way to tidy up the wiring. From this To this And from this To this

Thanks, my DIY sifu..

I think there will still be a minimum charge for 100L (should be ard $50 - do check around). At this minimum charge, the LFS would not mind delivering even up to 200-300L. I once paid for a 1,000L delivery at only $120, if I don't remember wrongly.

My equipment list. Circulation. 1. Eheim 1250 return pump. Within an ios, the head loss is negligible. So the actual return should be a true 1,200L/hr. 2. A Tunze6015 adds another 1,600L/hr of circulation. Filtration. 1. BM NAC 3+ protein skimmer. 2. A DIY upflow algae scrubber (UAS) lit by a custom made warm white LED set. 3. 300gm of red Biohome in a filter bag. 4. Activated carbon in a filter bag. Lighting. Still using a cheap Beamswork 2' LED. Now awaiting admin approval to start a bulk order for a 30W Cree LED set. Cooling. Dymax Windy W-8 fan. Controllers, Monitors and Misc. 1. Snail pH meter. 2. A DIY auto water top off unit. 2L square-ish water bottle from Daiso $2. Air tubes and a good regulator $5. 3. A DIY water DI unit. More on these DIY stuffs later. I'm taking this cycling period to fine tune the nitty gritties. 1 example is the auto top off. Took a few days of monitoring and adjustings to get the drip rate similarly close to evaporation rate. Of course the weather will wreak havoc with the evaporation rates, but at least I don't think I'll be off by so much in a 24-hr period. Water level has been quite constant in the last few days. Any suggestions what other equipment I need to have? Cheers.

DIY Project 1 The tank came with an underflow as well as the normal surface skimmer. I know from the start that I'm not doing bare bottom. I want a thin layer of sand, around 1" deep. I always knew I will eventually keep some gobies and pistol shrimps to observe symbiotic relationships at work. This is what I did to keep sand from clogging up the underflow. 2 pcs of acrylic cost me $2. Some simple silicon work and I'm done. But I guess I need to improve on my workmanship though. Haha.

I did another adjustment. I made sure that the water level in the return pump compartment stays high at a certain level. This way the micro bubbles escapes to the surface more than being sucked into the pump. Yeah..

Ermm it really is a very humble setup. Need reefers' opinions here too on my scaping.. Is 12kg of liverocks too overwhelming for a display tank of 72L? 60cm x 30cm x 40cm water height. Total volume is about 90L. Do note that the light from the warm white LED (for the internal ats) shining from the left, hence lighting up the skimmer in the ios compartment, has been blocked by a black piece of acrylic already. So the skimmer does not show up anymore. Opinions welcome please.

Pls take note that you should only top up with distilled water. Saltwater, pre-mixed or NSW, is for water change only. As only water is evaporated, the salt content gets left behind. So if you keep topping up with saltwater, your tank gets more and more salty.

Could it have been ric-napped by a colleague in your absence? Lol.. Or who knows, maybe you'll be surprised by a ric growth in a corner of your tank in a month or 2..

Yup, tapatalk easier to use too. Furthermore, many more forums are on tapatalk than forum runner.

Thanks bro.

Sure bro. But updates will be slow too, just like the speed of my tank progress. Btw how's the baby orange ric doing?

Bro, you can try this DIY method to get DI water fast and cheap. Stuff AC and resin in a bottle, run a small pump for a few hours. Ta dah!! Use fine filter bags for the media. I bought them at AM. If filter bags not fine enough, the media will leak. Use some filter floss at both ends for double protection. Invert the cut end of the water bottle to cap it. I used a heated fork to make many holes at this cap for outflow. So if using this method, you can just add tap water in for leak test. Then run this method before adding salt. Saves you the errand to lug 70kgs of NSW home. Hth.