JBM Posted January 12, 2018 Author Share Posted January 12, 2018 Quick funny story: One of our cats recently gave birth to a rather large litter of kittens. 9 to be exact. Woke up this morning to kitten meows. Apparently the kittens thought the reef tank was a giant water bowl & were drinking out of it. This struck me as strange, bc never have any of my other cats drank from any of my previous sw tanks. I asked my daughter who helped me fill and set the tank up, how many scoops of salt she put in. Apparently three (1/4 cup) scoops is all she put in...... Well, salinity is back up to were it should be now 1 1 Quote Link to comment
RotaryReef Posted January 15, 2018 Share Posted January 15, 2018 On 1/6/2018 at 5:38 PM, JBM said: So, shortly after my last post. My family and I got hit with another bomshell.....Turns out the insurance company is suing us to the tune of 400k for the damages to the house we rented. Needless to say, I didn't have a desire to reef. I cancelled all my orders & pulled the plug on the tank. It sat stagnant until wednesday. Fast forward 6 months later, I managed to beat the insurance company in it's own game & financially come out ahead. So time to reboot this tank. Im only gonna give y'all a single word teaser barebottomed Wow! I'm glad it worked out in your favor! Following along! 1 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 17, 2018 Author Share Posted January 17, 2018 Slow cycle is slow. However, this is a great time to get things started with my raspberry pi build. Nothing spectacular, but I'd like to be able to check and control temperature, turn lights on and off. And a auto top off. Im working on how to be able to do this remotely as well. 1 1 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 20, 2018 Author Share Posted January 20, 2018 Took a trip to my local micro center today. Picked up a raspberry pi zero, case, a ds18b20 temperature sensor and a 80mm fan. This little 5.5g will be pi'd soon enough. Eventually i'd like to ad a salinity probe & ph probe.... but those are extremely expensive. 2 Quote Link to comment
Ranjib Posted January 20, 2018 Share Posted January 20, 2018 Awesome , you plan to write your own controller ? Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 20, 2018 Author Share Posted January 20, 2018 2 hours ago, Ranjib said: Awesome , you plan to write your own controller ? At this time, I'm still a complete noob to everything Pi. Reading, and reading, and reading. I haven't even started to learn C+ or python. Ill be using your guide to get started with temperature monitoring, auto, and lights on and off. Once I'm familiar with how it works, see how far I can push it. Or if I need to add/ write new. Quote Link to comment
Ranjib Posted January 20, 2018 Share Posted January 20, 2018 28 minutes ago, JBM said: At this time, I'm still a complete noob to everything Pi. Reading, and reading, and reading. I haven't even started to learn C+ or python. Ill be using your guide to get started with temperature monitoring, auto, and lights on and off. Once I'm familiar with how it works, see how far I can push it. Or if I need to add/ write new. Got it. No worries. Keep us posted., its easy to setup. Start small, and keep your tank/live stock as top priority over everything else. Getting the equipment control will be trivial. 1 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 21, 2018 Author Share Posted January 21, 2018 On 1/20/2018 at 12:58 AM, Ranjib said: Got it. No worries. Keep us posted., its easy to setup. Start small, and keep your tank/live stock as top priority over everything else. Getting the equipment control will be trivial. I'm starting to see that. Everything is pretty much laid out for me to follow. As far as the tank is concerned. I'm on auto pilot until I have diatoms. I turkey Baster blast the bottom twice a week. Change the floss every 3 days. Lights are on a timer. Add a bottle of water every other day. Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 22, 2018 Author Share Posted January 22, 2018 So here's a bit of food for thought, or late night at work ramblings. I currently have a Hob. It's not a aquaclear 70, but roughly the same size. I'm thinking one of three things, and I'd like some input from who ever reads this. 1) Mounting a 80mm fan on the filter cover for the summer months. The fan would be controlled by the reefberry, so it only came on when the tank went over a certain temperature. 2) Turning it into a mini refugium with cheato and a a top mounted grow light, like a jbj or similar. It has a adjustable flow rate, so I could turn it all the way down for maximum contact time. This would then mean I need some sort of powerhead in the tank. 3) Find a submersible light, placed on the bottom of the filter shining upwards. To grow cheato. And still have a fan mounted to the lid, for temperature control. Quote Link to comment
Ranjib Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 Fan is fine, but make sure your ATO is setup appropriately. Fans can only bring temperature down around 2-3 degrees. If you are doing regular/weekly water changes, chaeto is optional. Its a good to have thing with such small volume and regular large water changes. But refugium certainly has its own merits. If you go that route, I'll vote for the HoB route Quote Link to comment
Lula_Mae Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 I have a 7" submersible LED from Mingdak on Amazon in my AC70 HOB fuge. It's a bit long to lay flat so I have it sort of diagonal in there. I'm sure there are smaller ones available though! Quote Link to comment
RotaryReef Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 On 1/20/2018 at 12:28 AM, JBM said: At this time, I'm still a complete noob to everything Pi. Reading, and reading, and reading. I haven't even started to learn C+ or python. Ill be using your guide to get started with temperature monitoring, auto, and lights on and off. Once I'm familiar with how it works, see how far I can push it. Or if I need to add/ write new. I have an extra Apex temp probe if you wanted to mess around with it. 1 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 22, 2018 Author Share Posted January 22, 2018 17 minutes ago, RotaryReef said: I have an extra Apex temp probe if you wanted to mess around with it. Thank you, I have a temp probe. Just waiting on some plasti-dip. And the relays. Might just "borrow" a bunch from work. Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 24, 2018 Author Share Posted January 24, 2018 Downloading noobs, rasbian, and reef-pi-1.2-pi0.deb now 1 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 26, 2018 Author Share Posted January 26, 2018 Went to the lfs to get a water test set. They were out. However, they did test my water. Ammonia is 0.25 ppm nitrite is bellow 10ppm nitrate is somewhere around 0.25ppm but not quiet 0.5ppm alk, calcium, and ph where spot on perfect So I cut the light cycle down to two hours. I'm gonna let it simmer for another two weeks, test again. Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted January 31, 2018 Author Share Posted January 31, 2018 Sunday a local reefer dropped off a small ball of chaeto. And those crappy 5 in 1test strips. Of of course I completely forgot chaeto removes nitrates. Well today day I decided to use one. Nitrites are zero & so are nitrates. Brown algae is starting to disappear. Gonna have the lfs run another water test. 3 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted February 5, 2018 Author Share Posted February 5, 2018 Tester frag it was free 2 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted February 6, 2018 Author Share Posted February 6, 2018 I'm sorry for the photo dump with zero explanation. The tank has cycled. Yay! I added chaeto into the HOB filter on 1/30, did a w/c That same day of 1/2 gallon. On 2/1 or 2/2 I added the test frag. Once a day I flip my chaeto. Found the asterina star in the chaeto. Pic was taken and it was placed in the DT to multiply. On 2/5 I did another 1/2 gallon w/c, that night I added 5 trochus snails. Today. Hopefully I can get my Pi zero running headless-ly with at least temperature monitoring. The eventual plan is to have a reefpi monitoring and controlling temp, lights and ato. I dont plan on having any fish in this system. Although that is subject to the whims of a 3 year old. Plans are softies, lps, xmas, a clam, and one Pom Pom crab. Pic pic is a teaser shot of the Zero doing zero things Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted February 6, 2018 Author Share Posted February 6, 2018 I was able to set up reef pi. Its running. With nothing connected. But it's running 2 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted February 7, 2018 Author Share Posted February 7, 2018 crudely wired in the temp probe. Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted February 9, 2018 Author Share Posted February 9, 2018 So, I've been working midnights. Wife woke me up with some surprise frags. One head duncan, what appears to be a torch, and a green candy cane. Hooray for frags. Oh, and if anyone can help me take better pics with this iPhone 6 Plus that would be great 1 Quote Link to comment
Ranjib Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 18 minutes ago, JBM said: So, I've been working midnights. Wife woke me up with some surprise frags. One head duncan, what appears to be a torch, and a green candy cane. Hooray for frags. Oh, and if anyone can help me take better pics with this iPhone 6 Plus that would be great Buy the app Camera+ for 3$. Then use the Lab -> Temperature adjustment to reduce the bluw. If you are willing to pay more, you can get the olloclip macro lense (65$) that will give you stunning macro shots Some of my shots can be seen here: https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/380336-healdsburg/?do=findComment&comment=5615928 Quote Link to comment
JBM Posted February 10, 2018 Author Share Posted February 10, 2018 Smart phone. Dumb user apparently. Played with the settings. Got this 1 Quote Link to comment
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