THE OFFICIAL ASK ALBERT THIEL THREAD

[Paul.b]

Atoll, I remember seeing thousands of them while I was SCUBA diving but I don't remember where that was. I dove in so many places that they blend together like skimmer effluent.

 

Just now, I accidently came down and glanced at the tank. My garden eel came to the front of the tank and started to dig down into the gravel. He assumed the gravel was a foot deep but boy was he disappointed. He just discovered what an Under Gravel filter plate is and I don't think he is happy. His head and tail are under the gravel but about 11" of him is waving in the current. I am sorry for him that I don't have a bigger tank but he will have to get over it because fish are not allowed to die in my tank. I hope he just figures out how to deal with this situation.

 

Tonight we have a house guest. She is actually a Supermodel. Her Mother and my Wife's Mother were best friends from when they were babies so my wife knows her all her life. We made linguini and crabs (I caught the crabs) which she loved because, like us, she is Italian and will eat anything from the sea. (I also made Tapioca, not the instant garbage either)

She is sleeping here and I have her room decorated in Steam Punk, but she loves it and is one of the few people that knows even what it is.

[atoll]

7 days after I set it up and running and they do say a picture is worth a thousand words. Remember this was a completely fresh screen. I did however rub some GHA over both sides of the screen but much of that was washed off when the water flow started as it had not really attached via it's own devices, however some bits did remain to seed the screen. Unfortunately I didn't think to show just what GHA had remained on the screen some hours after starting the waterfall flow commenced so you could see the growth since, but never mind.

Here are 2 pic's showing each side of the screen. I think they speak for themselves. Pic's taken at 1pm today. ATS started up on the 10 Jan 2017 at approximately 8pm





I will take more pic's in 7days time and every 7 days there after showing progress or lack of it. Thank's for baring with me.

[Paul.b]

For a couple of days I could only find two of my four porcelain crabs. Yesterday, right at the front of the tank, I see my big hermit crab munching on my smallest porcelain crab. He was pulling off the arms, sucking on the legs and cleaning his teeth with the antenna. I know what people will say, it is his cast off shell.

Well in that position in the jaws of a large hermit, it is very hard to tell.

So early this morning, before the lights came on, I counted them. One, Two, Three and yes, four. It is lucky for the hermit crab that he was just munching on an empty shell or I would have had to put him in time out.

The little crab now has a nice new, and larger shell so he can go and try to impress his three older cousins. I love those things.

[StinkyBunny]

He was doing his job Paul, cleaning up the bits.

 

Les, I'll be cutting the acrylic tomorrow and starting to assemble mine. This week is going to be rainy, you lot know all about that. I got the perforated fabric yesterday and I need to rough it up some.

[atoll]

He was doing his job Paul, cleaning up the bits.

 

Les, I'll be cutting the acrylic tomorrow and starting to assemble mine. This week is going to be rainy, you lot know all about that. I got the perforated fabric yesterday and I need to rough it up some.

 

Keep us posted on progress. I used a hole cutting saw to rough my screen up but you can use a broken hacksaw blade or even rough sandpaper as you probably know.

[atoll]

Quick update YouTube video 8 days on from starting it up.

Contrary to what some people thought it is very easy to remove the screen for cleaning as you will see.

[StinkyBunny]

I'm going to use a union on mine as well to make removal easier. I think mine will be about 20x30cm for the screen.

[Paul.b]

Busy morning like many people had. After we came back from breakfast I decided to do a little maintenance. For some reason I got ambitious. I had to put air in my car tires and add some oil and wiper washer fluid. Normal things that we don't want to do in the winter, but it is fairly warm today.

Then I saw my tank and figured I was in a maintenance mood so I better do this today. One of my gorgonians touched a sponge and the sponge started to grow up one of the stems. So I now have a very long, skinny sponge connected to a purple gorg. An encrusting gorg drifted against another purple gorg and started to grow over that so I also have two types of gorgs growing together on the same stem. Two corals fell or were pushed down by the big hermit crabs and were turned over on the gravel. The hermit crabs didn't seem to care and were wiping their "feet" on it.

I have a powerhead laying behind the rocks blowing water over the top of the center of the reef. At least that is what it was supposed to do but it wasn't doing anything for a while. I really didn't want to remove it because the cord was running behind the structure and I had to move large rocks to get it out. I cleaned it and noticed that it stopped because, as always happened with these after many years, the hole in the center of the magnet gets worn and enlarges, usually in an egg shaped fashion. When that happens the magnet hits the sides of the hole and eventually wears through which isn't good if you don't like getting shocked.

You can of course buy a new rotor, but anyone can do that. I take a piece of shrink tubing and put it over the shaft which enlarges it. If the hole in the magnet is misshapen or not large enough, I drill it out. Now the thing will run another year or two when I can do it again. Most of my powerheads are "fixed" in that fashion.

I also noticed that my algae scrubber was growing lettuce so my porcelain crabs could open up a produce stand so I had to take that apart and clean it.

All normal maintenance like everyone does.

 

[atoll]

Paul I notice your golden gorgonian seems to be going the way mine eventually did in that it slowly withered and the yellow/golden polyps became less and less. I guess that's down to a food deficiency as i don't think they are photosynthetic.

I bought a new gorgonian last week a light loving one and intend to do a frag of it soon as they are easy to frag once you know how. I first fragged one of these about 25 plus years ago and it appeared in the UK mag Practical Fishkeeping.

 

Here is my new one.

 

[Paul.b]

That picture is over a year old and I don't remember what happened to that gorg. It probably croaked and is now somewhere in the back of my tank where I will never see it again.
Your tank looks great, and the music put me to sleep.

[atoll]

That picture is over a year old and I don't remember what happened to that gorg. It probably croaked and is now somewhere in the back of my tank where I will never see it again.

Your tank looks great, and the music put me to sleep.

 

Well I am glad my vid music had some sort of affect on you Paul even if i's wasn't quite the one I had in mind lol

[Paul.b]

As I was doing this maintenance I noticed all the sponges I have. I love sponges.

Each sponge filters 20,000 gallons (I made up that number because I forgot the actual number) of seawater a day and are great at removing car wash soap from your tank.

I feed every day along with other things, clams. Clams come with clam juice that clouds the water. I like the fact that it clouds the water because clam juice is actually microscope particles of clam. Along with, I imagine, clam spit. My water clears in a very short while due to the sponges, some of which are 10" across and 10 years old. Most of them I didn't even buy and have no idea where they came from. Many of them, especially the white ones only grow in the dark. If you move one of those white sponges into the light, they grow algae and croak.

I think we should have as many sponges in our tanks as we can fit. Fantastic creatures.

All this blue stuff is a sponge. I keep cutting off pieces and giving it away so it doesn't encroach on my bed because my wife frowns on that.

 

[StinkyBunny]

I also noticed that my algae scrubber was growing lettuce so my porcelain crabs could open up a produce stand so I had to take that apart and clean it.

All normal maintenance like everyone does.

 

 

Damn it Paul, that's another ruined keyboard, lol.

[atoll]

A quick YouTube video just posted 2 weeks after setting it up my new Algae Turf Scrubber.

[Canadianeh]

Is Albert Thiel still responding to this thread?

[atoll]

Is Albert Thiel still responding to this thread?

 

He;s been very poorly recently and been in hospital, I am sure he will be back all being well.

[atoll]

Hope it's OK to post the following link here, Paul, you might find this of some interest.

 

http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/challenging-the-facts.286475/

[StinkyBunny]

Chris, I think, encourages the free posting of articles Les, unlike many other forums who have issues with Freedom of Speech.

[brandon429]

nr.com and r2r are the freest exchangers on the web agreed.

[Paul.b]

My wife loves lobster and last night she taught a CCD class at the Catholic school so I made her a nice lobster dinner. On these forums most people call these a clean up crew, but here we call them dinner. I know how people feel about killing one of these for dinner but I didn't want to wait for him to die of old age, so I carefully brought him into my living room and put him on a chair. I put a piece of string next to him. Then I turned on Rap music and left the room. When I came back, he hung himself.

 

[StinkyBunny]

You can have my lobster Paul, just don't reach for the shrimp, you'll get bitten.

[atoll]

I use an Aqua Medic kalk stirrer on my 100 gallon and run my ATU through it. However even though have a lot of SPS and other hard corals I found my calcium was getting too high while running all my top up water through it.

I could have just put a simple timer on the ATU so it just run at night but that would mean my salinity going up and down like a yo-yo so not the best solution. What I needed was for my ATU to put my reservoir water through the kalc stirrer at night and for plain RO to be delivered during the day into my sump. This way it would give me a much more stable SG and still provide enough calcium for my corals. I also wanted whatever I came up with to be quite cheap

. What I hit on, with the help of a friend, was to have a 2 pump system with a digital LCD timer switch supplying 12v to 2 X 12v mini DC pumps. I was already using such a pump and know how good they are for such a small very inexpensive pump. I had an old Nokia 3pin 230v to 12v DC 4.8w phone charger and all I had to do was remove the mini plug bare the wires and wire it into the switch timer. The 2 X 12v DC pumps were wired then into the switch timer. When completed one pipe from one pump was rooted into the sump and the other attached to my Kalk stirrer which in turn puts kalk into my sump. Then all I needed to do was programme the timer so kalk was delivered at night via one pump and pure RO during the day into the sump via the other pump.

Costs.
Digital LCD power timer switch. £7.99p delivered.
12V mini pump. £3.05p delivered.
Both above from the eBay.
Nokia 3pinUK phone charger I already had so free.
2 meters of 2 core bell wire 50p.

Total cost £11-54p

Switch timer.


12v DC mini pump.


Reservoir with 2 mini pumps installed.


Aqua Medic Kalk stirrer.


I can now adjust the amount of kalc and therefore calcium etc to my tank by altering the times on the digital timer between the 2 pumps.

[atoll]

Flow in the reef tank is very important right. My pump control centre with 2 X Maxspect Gyre FX150s a FX130 a Tunze 6040. I also have a Jebao DC8000 return pump. Complete with resident ghost.



My DT housing the pumps.

[CronicReefer]

My wife loves lobster and last night she taught a CCD class at the Catholic school so I made her a nice lobster dinner. On these forums most people call these a clean up crew, but here we call them dinner. I know how people feel about killing one of these for dinner but I didn't want to wait for him to die of old age, so I carefully brought him into my living room and put him on a chair. I put a piece of string next to him. Then I turned on Rap music and left the room. When I came back, he hung himself.

 

My lobster was extremely offended by this post sir. I ask that you write her an apology of no less than 500 words and send with it a gift basket of silversides.

[Paul.b]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGG Flood!!

 

 

 

 

I hate when I have a flood, but I really hate to have a flood when we have 8" of snow on the ground and are expecting a lot more, and I really hate having a flood, with 8" of snow on the ground when I also have a Doctors appointment and I know the doctor won't be there because she is a Sissy and didn't call me to cancel and they never answer the phone so I have to "write her a letter". I also hate having a flood when the water that is on my floor is supposed to be in the tank and the hermit crabs are shaking their claws at me, "Above the water" and I don't have any salt water to put back in the tank.

 

This morning I went downstairs (we have a finished basement) where the tank is. I immediately knew something was wrong by the sound of the powerheads spitting a watery mist on the walls. That is usually a bad sign.

 

My wife was in the kitchen making coffee and I didn't tell her about the flood. The reason I am happily married for 45 years is that I never told my wife we have a fish tank.

 

So I get to the tank and see the five gallon bucket under the skimmer that collects the skimmer effluent overflowing all over the place. My prize, "State of the art" projector that I watch my video's on is getting soaked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The High Tech, DIY auto shut off that is supposed to shut off the pumps when that bucket fills didn't work! Oh No. It always worked. So I jump in the water and start pulling out all the plugs. The pumps stop but the bucket is full so I dip a cup in it and slowly remove the water.

 

I go and look in my workshop, move all the Steampunk stuff out of the way and get to the bucket that I keep with new salt water. OMG, It's empty, just spider webs.

 

My wife yells "COFFEE is READY" I don't answer. Instead I go to my RO/DI and drain it into a bucket, throw some salt in it and fill a gallon bottle with hot water to float in there to warm it up as it is freezing and corals don't have a sense of humor when you douse them in ice water. I test the salinity, Way off the chart. OK, that will have to do as I don't have any more RO water to add. I didn't let the fish see my swing arm hydrometer but it is probably so far off that maybe the salinity is fine. After five minutes I figure the water is warm enough and I dump in the water. Wife yells COFFEE is GETTING COLD. I make up an excuse but mumble it so she doesn't know what I said.

 

You can see the bucket under my skimmer that normally takes 2 months to fill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I run to the closet and pull out 6 or 7 towels to throw on the floor trying to soak up an inch of water. They immediately get soaked and I need more. "WHEN ARE YOU COMING UP FOR COFFEE". I YELL, I am taking a shower. Only a small lie because I was all wet. I get more towels. Now I look in the tank to see if anything is complaining that the water I added was way to cold and so salty that when I dropped a pencil in the bucket, it stood up. No problem because I run a revrse undergravel filter and that allows you to do anything you want. Well almost, I mean I can't drop a dead moose in the tank, but almost anything else and it will be fine.

 

I just turned around to see if the fish were still alive. The yellow wrasses are spawning so I assume they are fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I go to see why my auto shut off didn't work. It is basically a GFCI that the pumps are plugged into. A pair of wires go from that GFCI into the bucket so that when salt water hits those wires, the GFCI trips shutting off the pumps. I test it and see that the GFCI did in fact trip, but the pumps were still going. OMG. The GFCI croaked. In all my years as an electrician I have never seen one of those fail in the on position. They usually just don't work.

 

So I change the GFCI, turn it all back on and get ready to shovel snow. "I THREW OUT THE COFFEE"