Wall mounted European Anemone Breeding tank! (Yet another change in plans)

[Nemcrazy]

Now those are do-able temps right there. I'm pretty excited about how it will work on the nine gallon. Keep that number dropping:)

[AquaticEngineer]

I got home and this was what the tank was at.....

 

My wife had been heating the house since it got cold today and was cooking in the kitchen, aka my test lab. Room temp was at 74F.

 

I'm still really impressed with the drop in temps I was able to achieve thus far. Especially considering that I intended for this to be a low 60's tank anyways. When I do my final install I will probably buy another one of these and run them as a tandem unit.

 

Its also a standard glass tank, so it has literally ZERO insulation like an acrylic tank would.

 

Before I final mount this wall tank I will pull the Chill Solutions chiller off and do some stress testing on an acrylic tank with a smaller volume of water. If it can consistantly pull down the temps on a 5-10 gallon acrylic tank then this will completely revolutionize keeping small volume coldwater tanks.

[Micro-Reefs Aquariums]

Hi Stu,

 

Thanks for sharing the results on this unit! When I tested out 6 gallon, I really had to do some serious R&D before I was able to produce a solid 55 F degrees on a volume of 6 gallons.

 

We ran two probes on our unit and used 3/8 inch thick acrylic and properly insulated the unit. Our test were done during the summer so we were very impressed with the drop and can only imagine what we would have gotten with winter tests.

 

Being that you are almost at double the volume of our unit and glass, those are some nice numbers, California goby would love that degree.

 

How do you like the hoses, are they easy to conceal? Also you might insulate them for better results.

[AquaticEngineer]

I'm doing a stress test right now on a 2 gallon 3/8" acrylic cube I made a while ago. I'm gonna let it run over night and see how low it gets.

 

The hoses are pretty easy to conceal, especially with the tank I am using. I was able to run the chiller off of the existing 75gph pumps that come stock in this tank. I'm going to mount the chiller in plain sight on the wall just about the tank but all you will reall see is the fan so it will exhaust the hot air up and away from the tank.

 

I'm going to use thicker walled black tubing for the final install.

 

On another random note, check out how many cultures of tigriopus californicus I just made up tonight from growing out my last harvest

[fullmonti]

If that works out as well as it looks like it will, it is really good news in deed. My 3gal 1" acrylic with two iceprobes runs almost all the time to keep 55. I would have been able to make that tank a little bigger had these be out at the time.

 

No rush but any idea when you'll be doing another UK order?

[AquaticEngineer]

After a night of playing with a 6"x6"x6" 1 gallon acrylic tank that is made of 3/8" material the chill solutions chiller has been able to pull it down to 57.9F and maintain it within 2/10 of a degree while coming on intermittently every few minutes.

 

I have several large sheets of 3/4" acrylic in my garage that I will be making tanks out of and the CSXC-1 Chiller should work just perfect on these. Especially on some of the travel tanks we use at shows, for holding livestock. A chiller that darn near fits in your pocket is a heck of a lot easier to ship than a big compressor based chiller.

 

Now on an acrylic tank, especially one with much thicker acrylic like 3/4" or 1" thickness that provides a greater thermal barrier between the water and the room temperature you should be able to use just one of these chillers on a 10 - 15 gallon system.

 

The main thing I wanted to accomplish was to find a flow through style TEC so I didnt have to drill a custom glass tank; one that could maintain a completely un-insulated glass tank in the low 60's and its been able to do that just fine. I think for piece of mind I will run 2 of them on the 12 gallon glass tank though

 

But for $199.99 it kept my glass tank chilled to house temperate species.

 

It has a built in thermostat.

 

It didnt require any drilling to install ( I think I had it up and running in 10 minutes after taking it out of the box)

 

I was able to hook it right into the existing plumbing inline with the pumps already on the system.

 

Its small and quiet.

 

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this little unit

 

 

 

[Micro-Reefs Aquariums]

I dont understand how 3 gallons with two probes have struggled for 55 degrees?

 

Especially at 1inch acrylic?

 

Our results yielded much better results something is not adding up.

 

?

[fullmonti]

That's what I thought too. The RKL is set for 57 but the thermometer I use for everything says 54 & every time I check the iceprobes are on.

[AquaticEngineer]

That's what I thought too. The RKL is set for 57 but the thermometer I use for everything says 54 & every time I check the iceprobes are on.

 

Get a mercury thermometer and eyeball the exact temperature and then calibrate your RKL temp probe to that. Then use the RKL to control the Iceprobes.

 

If the RKL is off in calibration by a degree or 2 that would do it.

[fullmonti]

calibration a side, the iceprobes are running every time I check them. My mercury thermometer says it holds 54 degrees. Looks like if they run nearly or all the time it should be colder than that?

[Micro-Reefs Aquariums]

calibration a side, the iceprobes are running every time I check them. My mercury thermometer says it holds 54 degrees. Looks like if they run nearly or all the time it should be colder than that?

Are you running any cover tops for your system? They make a huge difference in insulation and keeping the probes from having to be on 24 hours.

[Acielot]

So will the tank always look frosty like that whenever it gets humid?

[Micro-Reefs Aquariums]

So will the tank always look frosty like that whenever it gets humid?

I believe it frosts on glass fairly easy. We did not experience any condensation on our 6 gallon acrylic tanks. We used 3/8 inch material

 

That was our first concern when we attempted to bring down the temps to 55 degrees.

[AquaticEngineer]

So will the tank always look frosty like that whenever it gets humid?

The frosty looking acylic tank was made from scrap acrylic that was sanded down, hence the frosted look is actually just a lot of scratches lol.

[Micro-Reefs Aquariums]

Good tio know itv was just scuff acrylic and not frost.

[AquaticEngineer]

Had some time so I masked off the back of the tank and painted it black.

http://s246.photobucket.com/user/Stuwobbe/media/temporary_zps37b210c8.jpg.html'>

[AquaticEngineer]

Well the second chill solutions chiller should be here any day, and when that arrives everything will be going online

 

I managed to get all the prep work on the system done ahead of time already and all I have to do now is run a line from the stock pumps up to the chillers and back into the return lines.

 

Heres what I've been up to.

 

 

Spray foamed in all the gaps underneath the tank.

 

 

Cut the extra foam off flush with the back and then covered the entire back side of the tank with adhesive foam tape for more insulation.

 

 

Both the stock light and ballast ran hot to the touch so I gutted out all the stock wiring and ballast for the florescent light that came in it and replaced it with a pair of waterproof RGB LED light strips.

 

I ended up covering all the exposed components shown here for the LEDs in silicone to further waterproof them.

 

Got the tank back up on the wall mounts.

 

 

Got some native sand into the tank.

 

 

 

Once the two chillers are in place I should have a pretty quick set up since I can take 12 gallons of cycled water from my existing system to get it going. Then I will toss in a hand full of snails, aggregating anemones, hermit crabs, shore crabs etc to make sure everything is running well for a week or two.

 

Then the cool stuff can go in

[AquaticEngineer]

So I've been debating on what species I really want to keep in this tank, and I'm leaning towards a California Navanax. I can collect other nudibranchs from the Oregon coast as a food source for one, and I can keep plenty of other anemones in the tank in huge numbers still even if the "feeder nudibranchs" prey on those anemones since the Navanax will be thinning them out and I have an unlimited supply of aggregating anemones reproducing in my holding tanks.

 

Any other uniquely Californian species I should consider? I would love input from evryone on this

[fullmonti]

Looking good! You got a lot done!

 

So it's going to take two of the new little chillers to keep the temp? Still not bad for 12 gals.

 

 

 

How do you remove unwanted new baby nems? There are white Plumose babies already in my tank. I rubbed some off the acrylic already, but there are some on the rocks too. The tiny green jewel nems are growing, not sure if there are any new ones though.

[AquaticEngineer]

I'm going to use Opalescent Nudibranchs as anemone control. I've always wanted to do a coldwater opistabranch only tank, and now that more people are doing coldwater tanks I got no reason not to try it right? This is going to be my personal tank inside my house, and since I have just about everything else you can think of species wise for coldwater out in my garage, I thought I should do something I can't already enjoy.

 

Heck, I got a 6ft Wolf Eel out there right now,lol.

 

No seriously, I do.

[fullmonti]

Heck, I got a 6ft Wolf Eel out there right now,lol.

 

No seriously, I do.

 

That must have been fun to catch? I can imagine it would be like catching a large Boa Constrictor only underwater.

[AquaticEngineer]

He's like a big puppy dog

 

http://s246.photobucket.com/albums/gg100/Stuwobbe/?action=view&current=temporary_zpsd68ca34c.jpg&evt=user_media_share

[AquaticEngineer]

Just got word that I now have a 2" California Navanax being held for me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navanax_inermis

[Felicia]

Wow! Stunning! Do you know what it eats?

[AquaticEngineer]

Wow! Stunning! Do you know what it eats?

Yup It eats these: