Son of Kahuna (56K!)

[scolley]

Originally Posted by PDX-PLT

So you're saying that, if the pump output is not free-flow, but is constricted enough that pressure builds up (in your case, by the canister), the pump will leak. Where? There's a sealing ring in the shroud that surrounds the impeller; is that the leak location?

No, I'm clearly not explaining myself well...

My application of a universal pump had NOTHING to do with a canister. I had the hobby pump taking water off of a branch of my closed loop, and pumping it away to a drain (when I turned it on a solenoid that allowed water to flow down that branch to the pump.) My closed loop, and subsequently the branch, is somewhat pressurized. All closed loops are actually, but with our typical canister setup that pressure is pretty low.

But in my case I'm using an in-line pressure pump that pumps water through all my filtration. It does not remotely depend on head pressure from the tank as most PT setups do. This creates about 5 psi in my lines. And that 5 psi is felt on the universal pump when I allow water to flow to it (the solenoid again... ). When that happens, universal pumps have a nasty tendency to leak around the big round seal in front. Probably the one you are describing. They can't take the pressure.

Originally Posted by PDX-PLT

I was wondering how many gallons per minute of fresh water you are putting into the tank on the fill cycle, such that you need 900 watts of heating. Do those heaters heat the fresh water directly, before it hits the tank, or are they the same heaters for the whole tank?

The reason I ask is that I'm working on something similar; see this thread.

They are the same heaters as for the whole tank. But my fill line comes into my filtration loop just before the heaters. So it hits the heaters first. But if it doesn't heat it all before it hits the tank, it's not a big deal. The heaters will just heat the cooler tank water.

As to GPH, I'd have to go check at home - I'm away at the moment - but I think it is something like 12 to 15. Not much. But in the winter that water is like 45 degrees going into 85 degree water. Don't underestimate that impact. It matters. A lot.

Also, you have to keep in mind, that full 900 watts is not going to heating up cold water. In the winter that room is in the low 60's at night, so a lot of those watts are going toward keeping the tank warm - even without my adding insult to injury by adding freezing water.

I tested this with my old tank, and I wish I had the results I could share. I'd have to go dig them up... again, I'm not at home at the moment. But as I recall, I estimated that I had a little slack, maybe 100-200 watts. But no more. Of that I am certain. Sorry I don't have hard facts to back that up though.

[PDX-PLT]

Originally Posted by scolley

But in my case I'm using an in-line pressure pump that pumps water through all my filtration. It does not remotely depend on head pressure from the tank as most PT setups do. This creates about 5 psi in my lines. And that 5 psi is felt on the universal pump when I allow water to flow to it (the solenoid again... ). When that happens, universal pumps have a nasty tendency to leak around the big round seal in front. Probably the one you are describing. They can't take the pressure.

'got it, thanks. I guess when you think about it, that's not suprising. The cover is just a twist-lock connection, so the seal isn't tightened securely like a threaded connection (or even a barbed connection) would be.

As to GPH, I'd have to go check at home - I'm away at the moment -

'same here; my last post was from the Admiral's Club in DFW airport.

but I think it is something like 12 to 15. Not much. But in the winter that water is like 45 degrees going into 85 degree water. Don't underestimate that impact. It matters. A lot.

So takes an hour to add 15 or so gallons? That's slow, but water is a terrific heat sink, and takes alot to warm up. Did you even think/try of adding a little hot water into the mix on the fill line?

[original kuhli]

Hey Scolley, what are you using as a pressure switch for the your water change system? I'm trying to put the finishing touches on my plumbing...

[scolley]

Originally Posted by PDX-PLT

'same here; my last post was from the Admiral's Club in DFW airport.

Cool. Wear a silly hat or something so I can recognize you. I'm there rather frequently myself.

Originally Posted by PDX-PLT

Did you even think/try of adding a little hot water into the mix on the fill line?

No. That's a good idea! But my household plumbing is arranged such that I could get to a cold water supply a lot easier than hot water. It was never a consideration without MAJOR professional help with tank plumbing. But that IS a good idea. Would have saved a HECK of a lot of space in my stand!

Originally Posted by original kuhli

Hey Scolley, what are you using as a pressure switch for the your water change system?

It's not a pressure switch per se. It's a solenoid that can hold back a lot of pressure. But that is only 1 direction BTW. There is some degree of pressure differential it can block. But only one way - turn it around and the pressure opens it right up. But that's just a planning/installation issue. Make sure you have it pointed the right way. One way holds back the pressure, the other direction does not. Easy.

This is the solenoid. There are much cheaper out there, as documented by multiple fine members here. But this puppy is solid as a rock. When you give it power, it goes SMACK! There is a LOT of energy behind its opening and closing. IMO you do not have to worry about this thing failing in the wrong position. Not gonna happen, and worth a few extra bucks for peace of mind.

[original kuhli]

Thanks, great info.

I was referring to the sensor that tells the controller that the tank is full and thus to close the solenoid to stop water inflow.

[scolley]

Originally Posted by original kuhli

I was referring to the sensor that tells the controller that the tank is full and thus to close the solenoid to stop water inflow.

This is the item. Or at least one in that series. My model has been made obsolete. But these are the real deal.

You can pick them up on the web at Digikey. But unless you want to cut a hole iin the bottom of your tank, it won't help. Mine's connected to a bulkhead hole. Here's a pic. Not pretty, but it get's the idea across.



Also, you might want to take a look at this thread. In it I ho into hysteresis in a good bit of detail. That's a problem you are going to have with any decently accurate sensor - ripples in the surface of that water are going to make it flutter on and off rapidly as it approaches a full condition. So I've got the sensor hooked up to my AC III, which has a hysteresis control. It's too long to go into here. Check out the other thread.

[PDX-PLT]

Originally Posted by scolley

Cool. Wear a silly hat or something so I can recognize you. I'm there rather frequently myself.

next time you see someone with a Ron-Jon Surf Shop baseball cap and a graying beard, say hi.

No. That's a good idea! But my household plumbing is arranged such that I could get to a cold water supply a lot easier than hot water. It was never a consideration without MAJOR professional help with tank plumbing. But that IS a good idea. Would have saved a HECK of a lot of space in my stand!

In my case, the easiest route for the plumbing is through an existing chase for an HVAC duct, down to the laundry room sink. Since the fill cycles would be done late at night when no one else is using the water, hot/cold mixing should be fairly stable.

[scolley]

I thought it might be amusing to some people to see the web controls that come with the Aquacontroller III.

The AC III has a little web server in it. All you have to do is point your browser to it's address, and you get the little web site. So it has a little status page, where you can see the state of all your equipment - that's below. You can't use long names for stuff, so it may not be obvious that FP1 & FP2 are my peristaltic fert pumps, but most other things are easy to figure out. You can also force something on or off, as I did last night for maintenance, changing LT1 from "Auto" to "Manual On" to keep my lights turned on.



And this little view is the Program Editor page. Obviously this is where you do set the various controls on things, like the temperature and pH controls you see in this shot. It's not exactly intuitive, nor perfectly straightforward in getting something complicated working. But I spent years as a programmer, so I'm sure that helps with setting it up. For someone uncomfortable concepts like task FIFO and execution precedence though, you might have a bit of trouble setting up something beyond the simple controls the AC III ships with.



But this next shot is my favorite. The graphs!

I've got my controller set up to tank a snapshot of my temp and pH every 10 minutes. It's default is every hour. So the timestamps along the bottom of the graph are a bit goofy. It shows times, but not the dates. Pretty crappy info, and I assume that if I was using the default "every hour" sampling, it would do a better job of labeling stuff. But I still know what I'm looking at... each one of those cycles is a 24 hour period.



So if you look at the temp, you can see that during each day my temperature rises, and then falls at night. You can see that the overall temperature in the room has risen the last few days (it has), and that the tank temp KEPT rising yesterday. That's because I came home from a biz trip and did my weekly tank maintenance. But this time I kept the lights on an extra couple of hours.

And the pH is interesting IMO. Every night there is a little repeating set of three spikes. That's because each night I go through three cycle of drain/fill of 10-15 gallons of water. And once I lose 5-7g out of the tank, it starts out-gassing because the returns splash so much. I used to do one big drain/fill, and the pH would swing all the way up to 7.0, out gassing the entire tank. This is easier on my CO2 supply.

That last big pH hump was two fold - took my CO2 tank (empty) out yesterday for replacement, so the pH climbed all day. Though you can still see the little, nightly, 3 peak, spikes as it worked to pull it back down. And that big spike (or dip in the temp graph) is from from a brief power loss Tuesday morning. When the power came on, it did a sample. My probes (temp and pH) are both in my lines, not in the tank. So temp falls to ambient temp when the water is not moving. I've never figured out why the pH climbs. But if I shut off the pumps, the pH in my samples always climb. Don't know why - but I know what that spike is.

Oh well, I thought this might be amusing. It's a fun way to manage a tank.

[bgoodwins]

Great data, really helps you get a hold on tank management, and now you can do it remotely . Now if only you could get realtime npk measurements....

[scolley]

Well, it's time for the annual Aquatic Gardeners Association (AGA) Aquascaping Contest. The entry deadline is tomorrow, and I've put off until the last possible minute taking pics. I delayed because I was considering getting a better camera (I didn't - I'll wait until next year), and I was letting my tank settle in more.

My tank is not really competitively aquascaped. It's got all kinds of flaws. But it looks nice in person. So I'm entering the contest primarily to help the AGA keep the level of competition up. And also to kind of showcase the fact that you CAN have a decent looking planted tank with discus.

These pics are my rejects - the ones I decided to not use for the contest. But frankly, the ones I am using aren't any better - they just aren't these. And just in case anyone notices, I am also posting this same thing over for my buddies at simplydiscus.com to see too.

But I thought I'd share these with you. I'm overdue posting pics, so I hope you enjoy.





























Cheers!

[dufus]

Still looks great steve.
I'm planning a discus tank myself, and could only hope to make it look as good as yours.

The shallow sand looks pretty good too!

[Riley]

Absolutely beautiful discus! I would love to do a tank like that someday....

[fishscale]

One of the NASTIEST discus tanks ever. This tank is sick.

[eon17]

wow thats amazing and very confusing to me!

[Subotaj]

I always really like too see photos from your gorgeous madafaca tank!

Have you tried to plant Nuphar Japonica?
I think it will feet perfect here! (it grows really good in my planted discus tank).