On the Edge

[SARBoy]

Hi all,

 

Just thought I'd share our Fluval Edge.

 

After a 1000ltr reef it's a whole different challenge.

 

A pic for you is included.

 

We have about 3 kg of LR, two clowns, CUC, sand sifting starfish, star polyp, hammer head LPS and a Favia.

 

Filtration is LR, activated carbon, polyfilter and water changes (10-20% a week).

 

Hope you like.

[SARBoy]

Current lighting upgrade!

[SARBoy]

Some more pics

[SARBoy]

Update.

[SARBoy]

Well, since I last posted a lot has happened.

 

I broke the tank down and housed the inhabitants in temporary accommadation.

 

I lost the birds nest, hammer head LPS and the bubble LPS. In short the tank was an unqualified disaster.

 

By the end I was having hair algae blooms as the substrait was holding all the detritus and causing phosphate spikes and all sorts.

 

So what did I do?

 

First was to increase the volume. So I built a sump. First time I've made a tank from scratch. I'll post a bit more soon.

 

[DannaM]

Sorry to hear about your losses. That's a nice looking sump you did a good job. It should help you maintain better parameters in your DT

[SARBoy]

Cheers DannaM,

 

Yup it was a bit of a blow.

 

So next I needed to build an overflow box for the DT.

 

 

With that done it was just a case of getting it all together on the stand and leak checking. Only one which took a bit of time to track down and fix. It was in the drain pipe work.

 

 

Right. I now had a tank I could work with. As you can see from the above pic I used an old powerhead as a return and bought a boyu wg310 skimmer. I now have it for sale if anybody wants a useless piece of junk to clutter their house?

 

Next I transferred all the old stock, fish, LR, and some miracle mud with some calurpa into the new setup.

 

 

More in a bit.....

[Exquitas]

Sorry to hear about your losses. That's a nice looking sump you did a good job. It should help you maintain better parameters in your DT

+1

 

I also really like your build. Keep the updates coming!

[DannaM]

More pics please

[SARBoy]

So next up was lighting.

 

This has taken the form of DIY LEDs and an arduino using the jarduino software.

 

It took quite a while to sort out and I've still got a bit of tweaking to do but I'm mostly happy.

 

 

 

 

Sothis is where I was about 4 weeks ago. I recon a good jumping off point.

 

 

Next, starting to tweak things a bit....

[SARBoy]

Right, lets tweak.

 

So the skimmer I initially had was very cheap. There is a difference between cheap and value. One doesn't cost much and the other is gives good performance for the price. So the boyu wg310 is cheap and I thought it was worth a punt. I was wrong! I have now installed a bubble Magnus nac qq. It was a bit of a squeeze but I'm getting good skimate from it.

 

 

Additionally, I decided I needed some media filtration. So I added a fluidised reactor. I'm running carbon and rowphos.

 

 

Now as I was running the reactor from a feed from the return I needed to up the return flow. So after lots of research I bought a tunze silence pump to upgrade the return.

 

How it looks now. I'll try and get a good one of the DT in a bit.

 

[iadubber]

LOVE that display sump!

[SARBoy]

Cheers.

 

It has been something I've been thinking about for awhile. It's not quite up to display standards but its quite nice to see the workings. The sump was designed with the MM compartment along one side so it can be viewed.

 

I'm still not sure how it should look. I've got to do some research into low flow systems.

[SARBoy]

These pics are for Exquitas to see the positives and pitfalls of the way I did he overflow box on my edge.

 

 

 

 

 

This was using a dermal cut off wheel. It didn't work. I ended up using the dermal but with a drill fitting to creat the weir comb

 

 

 

 

 

Hope that explains the process I went through.

[Tochtli]

This is a really neat build, I especially like that overflow, it looks really clean. I used to run a Boyu skimmer on a 29gal; the skimmer wasn't all that bad, but it certainly was nothing to write home about.

[SARBoy]

Cheers tochtli,

 

The build was fun with out a doubt.

 

The boyu would just not skim for me. That's not to say it wouldn't and I might just have not hit the sweet spot. It was/is very hard to make adjustments in the sump due to limited area. But the boyu replacement has dialled in nicely with even less room due to bigger size. Just not worth the trouble in my book.

[Exquitas]

Hi,

 

May I ask where where you got your Arduino Mega, Lcd shield (looks like it's the one with the integrated RTC right?) and TFT-Screen from? Are those the original Arduino Circuit Boards or a "copy" like Funduino or SainSmart?

[SARBoy]

It's not an ARDUINO mega. I think it's sainsmart. It either came from the bay or the rain forest. Can't remember which.

 

This is a link to my LED build which may have the answers you need.

 

http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/showthread.php?t=667506

[farkwar]

How do you empty the skimmer cup?

[tibbsy07]

How do you empty the skimmer cup?

I was just wondering about this myself.

[SARBoy]

Ermm, well it's, ermm, tricky. One has to losen the coller holding it up and drop the main body down and then take the cup out. It's far from ideal but mush better than the previous skimmer!

[SARBoy]

http://s826.photobucket.com/user/tomgreene202/media/Mobile%20Uploads/6FD9C4F3-3018-4461-832F-B3C6532DAA8C_zpsf0gaoo5b.jpg.html'>

[SARBoy]

Some up dated pics. I hope you enjoy.

 

 

 

 

[SARBoy]

Some recent pics for you, I do like pics!

 

 

 

 

[SARBoy]

This tank has now been taken down. Thanks to those who posted or looked.

 

Cheers

 

Tom