My 240g tank journal

[jones57742]

Tristan:

I am new to this forum and had missed this thread.

Your conceptual designs, final designs and construction are just "unbelievable"*.

We have discussed an issue before but I still struggling.

[Tristan and Diana: it is Ron's turn now to ask the questions]

If for whatever reason the siphon breaks why
1) does the tank not overflow and
2) the pump not become a crispy critter (unless you have a low amp shutoff)
as the pump will continue returning water from the sump to the tank and the sump "will go dry".


This one I really struggling on!

There is baffling in the boxes that retains a certain amount of water when the siphon quits so that when the box starts re-filling the siphon will restart.

How in the world can this happen?

The, what I will term, horizontal leg of the siphon is above the top of the tank and hence even with the tank overflowing the siphon will not restart.

TR

*But obviously, based one of the photographs, you had some serious management guidance.

[Diana]

TR, click on the Pretzel on the previous page of this thread.

A siphon works because the outlet is lower than the inlet, there is water above the inlet, and there is no break in the pipe from beginning to end.
Even if part of the pipe is higher than the inlet, the siphon will run, as long as the outlet is lower than the inlet, and there is no break in the pipe. The trick is to get the siphon to start.

Try this: Get a length of tubing (gravel vac will work, though this demonstration works better with no gravel vac, just the tube) and stick it in the tank, and the outlet in a bucket on the floor. There is air in the tube, and no siphon will start.
Now, fill the tube with water (from tank or tap, it does not matter). Hold your thumbs over both ends of the tube, and put one end in the tank, and one end in the bucket. Release both thumbs. The siphon starts. This is because the weight of the water in the tube spills out of the tube, into the bucket. When this water leaves, something has to fill the tube from the other end. If the other end is in the air (not the tank) the water in the tube will spill out, but then no siphon will start. If the upper end is in the tank (Below water), then a siphon will start.
If the tube is long enough drape the tube down from the tank, onto the floor, then up and over the side of the bucket. The siphon still runs, even though part of the path is uphill. More of the path is downhill, so the water flows.

Now look at the Pretzel.
Lets start at A.
When the water is flowing it follows the course A-B-C...G-P- to outlet O which is really longer, and is submersed in the sump in some diagrams.

The top of A is where the water in the tank will be. When the pump in the sump adds more water to the tank it will overflow into pipe A and return to the sump. When power quits there will be no more water added to the tank, so the flow will stop, tank will not fill or empty, it will stop level with the top of A. Tank will not drain down through the sump to spill on the floor, because you size the sump to hold as much water as might be in the tank over the top of A.

Pipe A, B and C are in the tank. When the water quits it will stay in these pipes, about at the top of A. (I will come back to why in a moment) When power comes back on the tank starts to fill and water gets higher than the inlet, and starts spilling into it. The weight of this water pushes all the other water (That has been standing in the pipes) farther along, and re-starts the siphon.

Now look at it from the outlet end. Water is flowing down outlet O from pipe P-G-F... C-B-A. When the water stops the water that is in P finishes its path to the sump, but no more water follows. The siphon is broken at the vertical pipe R. The rest of the water stays in the pipes A-G.
When you add more water to the tank and it enters A, it pushes on all the water in pipes A-G until some water spills over into P then O, and the siphon starts.

You will have a float switch in the sump. When the sump gets too low the pump will stop. When the sump fills up, the pump will start again. My sump has a float switch that allows the water to be anywhere within a 6" range. At the low end of this range the pump stops. At the high end the pump starts. In actual running the pump is not constantly starting and stopping. It is very smooth, with just evaporation from the sump to top off. With as much range as my float switch has, I was topping off the sump every other day, but I could probably have gone every third day or so.

[crazy loaches]

Thats a good description Diana, I am not sure if Jones was referring more to my design or the over-the-tank overflows though.

I am using a drilled tank, and in a drilled tank there is no siphon. This is one reason drilled tanks are popular, not only do you not have any plumbing going down the back of the tank but there is no siphon that can break and potentially flood your main tank. Siphons can break, usually from air entering the system either from in the tank water or some kind of leak. In a drilled tank there is usually a 'weir' which is a partition in the tank that goes all the way from the base to the desired waterline (like 1" from the top). At the base of this chamber is were the tank is drilled and plumbing runs down to the sump tank. When water from the return pump raises the water level in the tank over the top of the weir then water flows over and down. Sometimes standpipes are used like I have to prevent water from falling all the way to the bottom and creating a sound similar to niagara falls (you or if you have a significant other they may not appreciate the noise). I also use a submerged intake to reduce noise. But the top of my standpipes are vented so no siphon is formed, it sucks air down with the water. The only thing to worry about would be the overflow teeth clogging on top of the weir, or some kind of obstruction in the overflow path as if the water cannot drain the return pump will continue to raise the water level in the tank and potentially drain your sump unless there is some kind of protection like the float switched Diana mentioned. I dont think I have mentioned yet or pictured, but I will have two float switches for protection, one that is set at the minimum sump water level to prevent the pump from running dry and the other will be in the main tank and will shut off the pump if the water level gets too high in the main tank.

[crazy loaches]

Lighting
Time to start the lighting, this will just be Part I since I am not finished with the lighting yet, just figured I'd post some pics and give some details.

I considered a few different things, AHSupply, MH, and T5HO. I definitely wanted to get a good setup. I wanted an efficient ballast and the best reflectors, minimizing wasted electricity. I didn't mind retro kits, since I will be building a canopy anyway. So I ultimately decided on a kit half way between the cheaper and most expensive I was looking at. It is the IceCap T5 retro kit, and I got two of them for a total of 8 54W bulbs. It utilizes IceCap 660VHO ballasts, which they claim when used on 54W T5 bulbs it will overdrive them to around 80-85W per bulb. For the folks who go buy WPG this gives me about 2.8wpg all on or 1.4wpg with half on. I'm also using IceCap SLR's (single lens reflectors) which seem to do the trick well.

For bulbs I received a variety, including GE Starcoat 6500K, Giesemann 6000K Midday, Giesemann 11000K Aquablue Plus, and UVL 10,000K Aquasuns. Now that I have seen them all I think its a great combination and don't know if I would just choose one or two out of them.


Trying to figure out how I want to position them. This arrangement doesn't waste any light over the overflows. But also doesn't allow the fixtures to be made into separable left and right halves.


This is the basic 4 x 4 arrangement. I ended up going with this for simplicity and so the left and right could be independent*.


This is about how the lights appear to the eye. I just temporarily riged everything up just to verify the bulbs and ballasts work.


Speeding up the shutter and dimming the lights down really show color that isnt quite so apparent to the naked eye.


Here you can see what each bulb is.


Starting to build a frame to hold the lights. I just riveted some aluminum angle together.


Here is the basic frame assembled.


Starting to mount all the hardware on the frame. The waterproof endcaps came with the kit to.


*A minor oversight when deciding on the lighting arrangement. I decided on two groups of four sitting side by side on there own brackets, thinking if I needed extra room to get into one end I could pull one side off. But I forgot I wired the lights to the ballasts such that two lights from each side are on the same ballast. So unless I install some kind of quick disconnect, the two sides are wired together and must stay together. If I were to do it over I'd go for the first pic were there are 3 on each side then 2 in the middle.

[Diana]

Could you wire them together with some extra length of wire, so that at least you can lift one side and not the other?

[jones57742]

Tristan:

What is the "theory behind the grow light bulbs" instead of 10000K and 7100K bulbs?

I am asking this because I have installed a MH fixture but am also using two PC's with two bulbs each.

I currently have two 10000K bulbs in one PC fixture and two 7100K bulbs in the other PC fixture.

I have a "ton of grow light bulbs" in the garage which I procured in my youthful ignorance and your thoughts on grow light bulbs vs 10000K and 7100K bulbs would help me "in my thinking".

TR

[crazy loaches]

Could you wire them together with some extra length of wire, so that at least you can lift one side and not the other?

There is some slack in the wire, just not enough to completely remove one half from the aquarium top.

Tristan:

What is the "theory behind the grow light bulbs" instead of 10000K and 7100K bulbs?

I am asking this because I have installed a MH fixture but am also using two PC's with two bulbs each.

I currently have two 10000K bulbs in one PC fixture and two 7100K bulbs in the other PC fixture.

I have a "ton of grow light bulbs" in the garage which I procured in my youthful ignorance and your thoughts on grow light bulbs vs 10000K and 7100K bulbs would help me "in my thinking".

TR

Well, I dont want to go to far off topic but on this tank I am not using any special grow bulbs. The only thing really with specialty grow lights is that they output most of their spectrum in the photosynthetically useful wavelengths, which generally is in the red and blues. They appear dimmer to our eyes since most regular bulbs are heavy in the green wavelengths, which our eyes are most sensative to but plants least sensative to. They also usually appear pink or purple, because they lack the green piments which combined with red and blue to make white. But with specialty bulbs we are at the mercy of the manufacturer since most hobbyists dont have fancy light meters that can really tell the tue difference, nor do the manufacturers label their lights with a more plant specific unit like PAR, PUR, PPFD. But its also proven that just about any bulb can grow plants well. FWIW I have heard on other forums that the 10,000K Aquasuns are one of the highest PAR T5HO bulbs, so hoping they will work well for me.

[jones57742]

Tristan:

I asked because in the photograph the 2nd bulb from the top I believed to be a growlight.

I appreciate the input based upon which I am contemplating "pulling 4 of the growlight bulbs out of the garage" and putting in the PC fixtures as "plenty of viewing light" is available via the 2 MH's during daytime and the blue & white LEDs during nighttime.

TR

[Graeme Robson]

Looking good Tristan!

Neat light-sabers also....

[crazy loaches]

Sorry havent been online in a few days...

Tristan:

I asked because in the photograph the 2nd bulb from the top I believed to be a growlight.

I appreciate the input based upon which I am contemplating "pulling 4 of the growlight bulbs out of the garage" and putting in the PC fixtures as "plenty of viewing light" is available via the 2 MH's during daytime and the blue & white LEDs during nighttime.

TR

Well that bulb may perhaps be called a grow bulb by some, IDK, but from the stores I purchased it is not advertised or sold as a grow bulb, just an aquarium bulb 10,000K. Its actually more common that the reefers purchase and use these on their reef tanks for certain corals I guess. In anycase, I think it will work quite well for FW plants, and it does have the appearance somewhat like a grow bulb, but thankfully not 'pink'.

Also thanks Graeme! yeah with the high shutter speed pics they do look like light sabers Hopefully the force will be with my plants . I guess looking at the middle pic the top bulb would be like the sabre Luke received from Obi-Wan Kenobi, the bottom one would be the one Luke later made himself, and the reddish one would be Vader's .

[crazy loaches]

Ok, well looks like I wont be finishing the canopy anytime soon so I'll have to put off finishing the lighting and canopy for later on. In the meantime I'll get started on some electrical and control stuff...

Control & Misc Electrical


This is going to be the brains of the whole operation... the Neptune Systems Aquacontroller III. I compared many systems, and for the money and what I wanted this is the one I finally decided on.

Initially I was just going to use timers for everything. But With like a dozen different timers, and the good ones with battery backup, would be cost effective to buy a cheap controller like the AC Jr. Not to mention the added benefits... but the more I thought about it and looked into then I wanted the webserver and all that good stuff so I went with the AC3 instead of the Jr.



I put in a few outlets in the stand. I temporarily put a plug-in GFCI (the yellow thing). I actually had bought a GFCI outlet but couldn’t find it. I'll probably switch it now I have found it again.



A couple more outlets on switches. The shoplight is plugged into one until I rig up some door switches. You can see the Neptune socket expansion box which will be for the heaters and run from a power line on a different circuit to reduce load on the main circuit in that room (currently using 800W of heaters, debating on 1200W).



Sorry its not organized yet... but here is the Neptune DC8 'power brick' that will control the main pump and powerheads, two banks of lights, moonlights, fert dosers, water change pump, and heaters.



A lot of what I wanted to do (automation, centralized co2, etc.) required me running a bunch of lines between the tank and utility room. Easy since the rooms were side by side... well not so much. Had I put the tank on the common wall it would have been a piece of cake. But no, it wouldn’t look very aesthetic so it went on the wall on the opposite side (exterior wall). Besides running all the stuff across the floor, the only 'hidden' way to do it is run everything overhead through the soffit that the furnace ducts run through across that room. So I cut a hole and put in what I call a mud ring (not sure if the plastic ones go by a different name though) which is what’s used for low voltage jacks like cable tv or phone. If I ever move out and rip out the tank the hole can either be patched or a cable tv and phone/ethernet jack installed there. The pic shows a 'fish line' fed through from the utility room side and out over top the tank.



This is all the crap I had to fish through the soffit. It took a little bit of work.



View from the utility room ceiling. What you cant see is the part of the ducting about 10 feet in that was mostly blocking the passage. There was some choice words exchanged between me and the ducting.



Success! Now I have an H2O line, drain line, co2 lines, cat3, and cat5 lines run from the tank into utility room.



I didn’t have to cut a hole in the back of my cabinet to run the lines (so far), everything was able to squeeze through the gap around the overflow bulkhead cutout.



The other side.



Putting fittings on the cat3 and cat5 lines. I had to run cat3 for the Neptune DC8 I have in the utility room which will control co2 solenoids and water change solenoids for now and perhaps some other tank equipment in the future. The cat5 will be an ethernet connection to the Aquacontroller so it can be accessed over the web and so I can record all the data to my computer.



Arghhh! Split pair! lol. Poor lighting and me being a little rusty at putting fittings on meant I had to redo a few fittings.


I don’t have it pictured yet since I am not done but I also spent two days running a cable and cat5 line to every room in the house (all homerun to the utility room and all wall-fished down from attic with dual jacks installed). So don’t complain when it takes the cable guy more than an hour to wire up all your tv's it took this has-been cable guy almost two whole days to wire my house.

[jones57742]

tristan:

Folks accuse me of being verbose and "using big words" but you have really got me "stumped here".

In the most simplistic words which you can formulate (ie. I can understand) what is "all of this power/control system wiring about"?

TR

[shari2]

It's over my head too, but lighting and water system I got. (I think )

[Mark in Vancouver]

Sheer joy to watch this project unfold. Taking lots of documentary photos is exactly what is called for. It's the kind of thing that you could show to your high school shop teacher - if you wanted to give him a heart attack!

Much of the electrical is beyond me, but I study every post you add to this thread. Needless to say, you are not allowed to stop with the documentary at this point! MORE! Up to the point when the tank is actually stocked, please.

What would also be very interesting, just as supplementary material, would be to see some of your drawings and plans, and also a basic accounting of the cost of it all. Not to push the privacy issue, but DIY on this level is so fascinating. At the end of the day, could you have hired someone to come and set it all up for you for even remotely the same cost?

I think we should create a permanent link to this thread on the Articles section of the site - How to Build a Large, Fully-Automated Loach Tank from the Ground Up. Maybe we can eventually edit/annotate all that has been written so far to include the questions and input people have submitted.

Just fantastic, Tristan. I'm really impressed by your skill and resourcefulness.

[crazy loaches]

Sorry 'bout that

I assume its the controller that your asking about (Jones)? Its a controller which is mainly used for monitoring tank parameters like pH and temperature, and controlling devices like lights, heaters, etc. It does many things, but thats the main function.

When I started this project I was going to automate everything, which without a controller was going to be done with a lot of timers. Like lights turning on and off, co2, water change. It would have required a whole bunch of timers, and I'd only get good programmable electronic ones that have battery backup. So just looking at it from a perspective of replacing a bunch of timers, the AquaController Jr combo pack with a DC8 power brick is well worth it I think. But as I looked into controller more and more and realized what all they could do I opted for a middle of the road one that had a built in webserver - meaning I can see all my tank specs over the web, including the ability to turn stuff on and off or customize the program remotely over the web. I can make a website that shows my current tank stats to and things like 24hr/weekly trends etc. Some other interesting features are alerts - I can get an email when the power goes out at the house, ph is to high or low, temperature, etc.

I've had the controller running for a couple weeks now and everything seems to be doing fine. It holds the temperature within .3*F (currently set to turn the heat on at 78.9 and back off at 79.1). I am also running my co2 injection off from the pH, on at 6.45 and off at 6.35 during the day and 6.7-6.6 at night which should give me about 30ppm during the day and just a tad under 20ppm at night. I might yet shut it completely off at night, have to figure out how long it will take it to build back to 30 though. I have the controller controlling 3 sets of lights currently, 2 main banks and 1 set of moonlights. I also have it change about 10% of the water daily, controlling a pump in the sump to drain down to a water level switch with a timer set as a failsafe, and then a solenoid on the freshwater line with a float valve to stop it and a timer failsafe again. I have emergency water level switches that indicate if the sump tank gets to low or the main tank gets to high, the return pump will be deactivated (and an email sent). I also have a feed cycle programmed so that when I hit the button on the controller the main pump and all powerheads go off, then powerheads kick on after 5 minutes, and after 10 minutes the main pump kicks back on. This prevents a lot of the food just getting sucked down the overflows. Oh, and a ran a long extension cord out to the Christmas tree and lights, so it turns on at 6pm and off at midnight .

The controller is expandable too... the AC3 can control up to 24 devices, and accept multiple pH probes and temp sensors for a multi tank setup. The AC3 Pro can even be setup to monitor dissolved oxygen levels which really caught my eye, but between the extra cost of the Pro over the AC3 and the Oxygen probe your looking at $700. I passed on that. They also make waverboxes or whatever they are called that can control variable speed pumps like the tunze.

Sorry about such the long post, just trying to fully explain what all the controller will and can do.

Mark - thanks for the accolade. I just hope it turns out well in the end... there are so many things that can still go wrong. And dont worry it will all be documented... I've thought about how to make it into an article... not really sure yet, but figure it should wait anyways until its all done and actually stocked with loaches. It wouldn’t make a good article if for some reason I killed all my fish! lol. So maybe when its finished and has proven itself. I do have lots of plans and stuff like that... I've filled about half of a 60 page notebook so far. I also started a cost sheet... but earlier on I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of everything I was purchasing and stopped keeping track. Plus so many design changes. But maybe I can redo it when I am finished, and come up with a list of what everything cost. I just dont want people to think I am made of money, this thing has cost a lot more than I originally planned, and had I known what it would costs I honestly would not have done it (or at least done it a lot more low-tech). But since I am already into it this far I am going to see it through the end.