I liked the picture of your beaver better.

Nice Pic

The Nurce top-off is nothing new, and it works very well - I have no idea why people get all wraped-up in the theoretical "what-if" concepts - osmosis? c'mon people the tube that you use to control the water level has an air-gap (vacuum) in it, so there is no saltwater/freshwater mixing. It is slightly difficult to understand the concept of how this system works though - it is a good idea to search for "nurce top-off" to find some diagrams of what's going on.

Inherent inadequacies - It doesn't dose very slowly though - and it is constant, so it's no good for dripping kalk (overnight) in my personal opinion/experience (large pH flux).

The only physical problem that I have ever had with this method is making sure that everything is very air-tight, salt creep has a way of breaking seals, and killing the vaccuum inside the top-off container, causing you to slowly empty it. Cheapest consistent top-off though - and no electrical or moving parts.

Thanks for all the view points on this top off matter.
ToeCutter and MadTownMax, thanks for the insight. It makes me feel alot better!

I have decided to put Precision Marine's HOT1 skimmer for this tank. I will post some pics when it arrives.

Thanks

Sorry, as soon as I posted that I realized that osmosis only applies to stuff moving through a membrane. I was hoping nobody would notice and call me on it . I know there's another word that I'm looking for but I've been outta school too long.

Thanks for putting up the name of the type of topoff MadTown. I'll do some googling. I'm actually pretty stunned that the freshwater layers nicely like that. Makes me want to rethink using float-switch based topoffs...

Oogie, I'm sure you've got a bunch of work to do on other areas of the cube but when you do get it up and running, I'd love it if you could check your salinity in the reservoir and put up numbers after a day or two of contact with the sump. If you find yourself with extra time anyhow...

The word your looking for is diffusion*

If you guys want, I can send everyone who wants plans on how to make an this topoff with stuff that every aquarist should have (milk bottle, silicon, and airline tubing)

Casabubu I would love one a plan for the Nurce top-off .

It took me a second to actually figure out what the new one was :/

how the hell did you guys find that pic of uncle toe? I haven't seen it in a while. this one brings a more accurate image of toelester to mind.



or this

Hmm, not sure all that picture means, but anyways, here are some updated shots.

Here is sump area with Precision Marine's HOT1. I needed to re do some plumbing to make it all fit!



Here is shot of the tank just 2 pieces of small live rock and lots of base rock. I will add more rocks later. Lots of bubbles from skimmer because I just turned it on!



Here is controller I am using. Its called Aquatronica from italy!



Thanks

insanity

Well, you have all the equipment right, but your aquascaping is well...BAD...

What kind of rock is taht? Looks like it came out of my drive way .

Sorry for the critisisum, but that's just plain awfull...nothing personal.

It's certainly different and unique,... but it'll be PITA when it comes to gluing the corals to those pieces of rocks, unless you stack them like shelves.

alexwbush: I know! Help me!!!!!

Travis, mdt178: Yeah it looks ugly because aquascaping is not done yet. That is sort of like frame for the rocks. I hope it will turn out ok!

Here are shot of the sump area. As you will notice, I returned my PM HOT skimmer because it made me exceed 12 gallon limit. New skimmer is made by company called Pro Clear Aquatics Systems and model number is MPS75. Its small and its ventury driven. It comes with RIO 600 and I replaced it with Maxi-Jet 1200. Also, I decided use the float switch I already had for the Aquatronica controller I have. I wanted to give it a test.



Here is close up of the skimmer.



Here is shot of little more live rock added.



Thanks!

Does that skimmer work better than the old one? BTW i think the aquascaping looks pretty cool! Your nc6 has even made me start one up.

FYI if you ever need another small skimmer, a jebo 2003 is great (I wouldnt trust any other jebo products though)

It could probably skim a 55 gallon...

Plus its only $35...
_________________________________________

I agree, the rocks arnt... great? you have this awsome setup, but no live rock (yet) if I were you I would just put all live rock, no base rock...

honestly, that's the craziest ###### I've ever seen.

shroom: I think this skimmer will be ok. Its still breaking in so, give couple of weeks and I will let you know.

Maxvan1: Thanks for that info! Any links?

lgoins: Its about to get even more crazier...... Stay tuned!

I am seriously disturbed by the amount of free time some people have! Either I am doing something terribly wrong or Oogie is Dr. Frankenfish!!!
In all seriousness, great setup. I can't wait to see what else you have under your lab coat.
Bob

no, and as far as I know jebo doesnt make them any more... so e-bay only...

it runs off a 512GPH pump... and has a pin thingy (ahh cant remember what its called! ) , thats all I know...

You want to look under Oogies Lab Coat?? :x

X) Not exactly what I meant.

i love the equipment and all that technical jazz you added to the tank. the live rock is...where'd you get it? i heard premium aquatics has GREAT rocks, i'm going to order some from them for my fuge and the bf's tank.

this tank is CRAZY! in a good way, in a very excellent way

where'd you get your pvc and ballvalves and etc? they look awesome.

NanoBob: Thanks for the comment!

Maxvan1: Thanks for the info! I will look in to it!

Babycakes: I am aware of Premeium Aquatics have grea rock! I have used their rock in my other tanks! Great colors and full of life! I wanted to use half base rock and half live rock for this tank. Base rock is just caribbean dried rock I glue together. Live rock I have is from my other tank that has been "Cooked" for about a month. So not much life on them but it has full of bateria! It shuold get covered with some coraline in no time. I get my plumbing stuff thru either Lowes near me or http://www.savko.com.

Here is a shot of my next project.
226W Peltier water cooled by Swiftech water block. I am hoping this would be enough to get me thru summer. I haven't gotten all the parts yet but I will post more as I get this going.

Here is shot of finished DYI chiller I was talking about in above post.

what's the $ total so far?

Well, I had the radiator and block for my computer system. So not much on that. But, I decided to take that out because it cooled way to quickly and it made sump area really hot. I will just put it back to my computer system!

oogie, can you tell me what a "cooked" lr is? X)

and that chiller is...wow. where'd you get such an idea and how does it work?

Cooked LR is liverock that has been kept in a dark container with no nutrients in order to hopefully pull all the organics (P04, N03). You keep high flow and a skimmer running so the bacteria will hopefully eat all the nutrients and the flow will pull out all the detritus trapped deep inside. It is a great for BB tanks I hear since it keeps the rocks from shedding in the tank (good for any tank really, especially if you have algae problems).

Great mods btw oogie! This thing is a gonna be an SPS monster!

Babycakes: DarkXerox has given you a very good description of "cooked" live rock. That chiller is powered by peltier much like in Iceprobes. Thats how sometimes we cool our CPU in computer so I thought I could apply it here!

DarXerox: Thanks for the comment and explaination of "cooked" live rock.

Here are some shots of HydorFlo installed using Maxi-Jet 1200.



Here is shot of water deflector. Since HydoFlo is so close to surface, when it turns towards surface, it splashes water in to the splash guard of the hood. So I made this little deflector to deflect the water down in to tank without getting to the splahguard.

Wow,very nice oogie. I like your BB so much. It looks better than i thought. Cant wait to see your tank finished.

What kind of rock is that oogie?

Be ready for tons of salt creep on that deflector...

I had that for about 2 days now, none of water gets on top of the deflector. So far I am not getting any salt creep because its continuosly wet. We shall see.

Travis: Some are live rock from LFS and some are base rock. Base rock is dried caribbean rocks.

Amazing job oogie. You are genius. Scratch that...evil genius!

Thanks.

Here is shot after re-arranging rocks.



Thanks

Now i really like how the rock is! Cant wait to see it with coral.

Thanks Shroom!

Now, I have discovered something interesting and it might help other nano-cube modders. I was worried about cube running hot with MH and all, but sueprisingly, temp has been steady around 80 with weather going up to near 100!

Here is pic of hood underneath.



I took off the splash guard, and hide all the wires with cpvc pipes.
Now, MH is protected by UV shield glass. I think because I have fan blowing in against water, then exiting thru the vent hole in front, it keeps the temp stable. I guess it does eveaporate more water then normal cube would but I think its small price to pay for stable temp.



I guess this will be hard for people with tons of PC jammed in the hood, but if you can manage somehow to suspend the MH higher like I did, and If you secure it, its good idea to take splah shield off and put a vent hole with fan blowing directly on the water.

Hope this helps.

Paint that PVC black! Come on, you spent all that time molding in the halide and you can't spend 10 minutes to spray the unsightly PVC black?

Nice tank, keep us updated!

LOL, got lazy.

I think I have hitchhiker and it started growing. Not sure what it is. I was hoping its a SPS! I am talking about green thing in the middle of the pic!

Here is another aquascape shot. I finally figured out white-balance thingy so pic don't look so blue anymore!

still not liking the base rock, sorry... I think you should take it out... Plus, it will give your sps more room to grow (I assume your going to have sps, because you have a halide...?)

Im going to have to agree with Maxvan. If you just invest a little more money and buy premium liverock to replace the base rock then your tank will look astonishing! I mean after all that work and money youve spent on modding the tank, you wouldnt want to blow it by saving a few bucks on liverock. anyways.. thats just my opinion

btw: great tank mods!

Base rock i constructed is not to save money. I wanted a structure, where it gave me flat surfaces to glue frags and have it encrust over. Also, I wanted tank to look full but not restrict the water flow and create many "dead" spots. I actualy put lots of thoughts in creating this structure.

Also I wanted to create low-nutrient envoirment and using base-rock sounded like a good idea. I added some live rock for bio-diversity, but I wanted bacteria to colonize on the base rock not algae. I "cooked" live rock for about a month, but amazingly there are algaes and other life-forms still on the rock. I just wanted to minimize that. As I add more corals hopefully my aquascaping will begin to show its pluses.

Thanks

i cooked my rock for a year maybe it's too long lol

i think you've done everything really well oogie, at the end of the day you've made it according to your "vision" of what you wanted.

brianemone: Thanks for that comment. Yep I am trying to acheive my vision!

ashburn: Hmmm, tad too long? LOL

Here is my first addition to my tank. My LFS had huge beautiful piece and I noticed two sections where it looked like it broke off. So I asked owner, if I can buy the pieces that broke off if they had it and he gave it to me for $20. I guess I am lucky!!!!



Thanks!

Nice frag

lucky indeed.

Nice thread Oogie, looks like you've put alot of thought into the NC6. Good luck, although I doubt you need it.

That's an awesome frag

Thanks guys. Yes I really do like the frag.

I have couple more pieces comming in tommorow so stay tuned!