12G Long Shallow Reef - Hong Kong

[StinkyBunny]

Very nice tank.

[patback]

Wow.  I'm impressed with everything.  From the stand, the planning, the coral, the photography.  Great all around!

[Yamato]

Hey there! I am also in HK. Will be following this thread. Great job. 

[duganderson]

Gorgeous tank!

 

Question on your plumbing.......

 

I'm looking to do a simple plumbing setup and limit whats in the tank and I like what you did.

 

Are the two water outlet's holes  at the same vertical level?  Is the surface skimmer higher than the hole that goes straight to the sump?  What happens if suface skimmer get's plugged......would the other hole be able to handle all of the water?

 

I would love some more details of this because I'm a little confused.  Thank you!

[madtrax]

On 11/22/2018 at 5:32 AM, duganderson said:

Gorgeous tank!

 

Question on your plumbing.......

 

I'm looking to do a simple plumbing setup and limit whats in the tank and I like what you did.

 

Are the two water outlet's holes  at the same vertical level?  Is the surface skimmer higher than the hole that goes straight to the sump?  What happens if suface skimmer get's plugged......would the other hole be able to handle all of the water?

 

I would love some more details of this because I'm a little confused.  Thank you!

Thanks! The holes are indeed at the same level but in practice you can see that the middle one (which is already much larger) uses a 90deg elbow which ultimately makes it higher than the main drain. This hole is first an emergency drain (it's a large 1" pipe that can handle all the water if the main drain gets plugged or the syphon is broken) and then do some light surface skimming. 

If it gets plugged, the main drain will be able to handle the water, just the water level will rise slightly.

 

If both drains get plugged then the return chamber will dry up as I ensured that all the water in my returned chamber can be pushed in the main tank without overflowing (it's really at the edge but doesn't overflow). Tho, the ATO will start adding water back, so technically I guess there will probably be some limited overflow but the ATO will automatically stop if it detects that it's pushing water for too long (like 30sec).

 

Hope it makes sense!

 

[dandelion]

Wow this system looks amazing. Thing I like about being reefing in Hong Kong is having all LFS all on one street. Being closer to the tropical ocean certainly helps too with live stock cost. And you can easily get a lot of cheap equipments from China.

 

That being said is it just the LFS or do people really cram more fish into their small systems, just like they pack more humans into tiny apartments? (Not trying to be rude. It’s one of the reasons why I emigrated.)

[dandelion]

On 9/5/2017 at 5:26 AM, madtrax said:

Hi,

 

Talking about lights, I got my hand on a pre-loved Seneye Reef monitor on eBay. I was specially interested by the PAR monitor. My plate Montipora are currently getting 240~280 PAR with my lights down to ~25%. I wonder if they will be fine or if it's already too much. Would love to get some feedbacks.

 

Also, I have noticed that Seneye has given some code related to the USB driver of their device so I decided to play around and see if I could connect it to an Raspberry Pi in order to monitor pH, Amonia and Temperature remotely. Turned out to work pretty well, I developed a quick software that runs on a Raspberry Pi which publish metrics on a simple database that a custom webpage is using to display them. That allows me to get alerts and monitor the temperature when I am not home. In addition, I use it as a standalone PAR monitor when plugged with an small external LCD screen. (Note that my Arduino is also plugged to an 8 channel relay which allow me to control 8 different equipments remotely).

 

I will publish the code if anybody is interested btw.

 

Cheers,

 

 

 

Do you hook your arduino onto the pi? I was working on an arduino project until I got too lazy to test my code in real life hehe. I mean if I made a mistake in my code it may dump the entire jar of alk supplement into my tank.

 

what equipments do you have hooked onto the 8-channel relay?

[madtrax]

4 minutes ago, dandelion said:

Wow this system looks amazing. Thing I like about being reefing in Hong Kong is having all LFS all on one street. Being closer to the tropical ocean certainly helps too with live stock cost. And you can easily get a lot of cheap equipments from China.

 

That being said is it just the LFS or do people really cram more fish into their small systems, just like they pack more humans into tiny apartments? (Not trying to be rude. It’s one of the reasons why I emigrated.)

Thanks !

 

Totally agree, it makes life easier to have all the LFS in the same street, the downside is that you have more temptations and always 'wonder' what's next door 😄 I have seen a lot of crazy stuff tho.

 

The main problem with LFS in Hong Kong, in my opinion, is that most of the fish (and also corals) are in really poor health and they usually only last few days if you don't have a proper QT setup. Sure they are really cheap (relative to US for instance) but the survival rate is very low. There is a big second-hand market where people trade corals and fish which are in much better condition (http://seafishzone.com)

 

And yes, I have seen many overcrowded tanks (on this second-hand website) where it's really sad to see. We probably don't have the same notion of space as we are used to small apartments indeed : )

 

6 minutes ago, dandelion said:

Do you hook your arduino onto the pi? I was working on an arduino project until I got too lazy to test my code in real life hehe. I mean if I made a mistake in my code it may dump the entire jar of alk supplement into my tank.

 

what equipments do you have hooked onto the 8-channel relay?

 

I originally planed to used it with individual dosing pumps but ended up buying a proper doser, the BM T11 which ends up being almost cheaper. I only use the Raspberry now which I use as a Homekit bridge (see https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge) to control several stuff like my A/C, fan, mangrove light, temp. probe and does the reading of the Seneye.

 

I have transitioned some of my stuff to super cheap and reliable Sonoff wifi switches (https://www.itead.cc/smart-home/sonoff-wifi-wireless-switch.html) with custom firmware (https://medium.com/@jeffreyroshan/flashing-a-custom-firmware-to-sonoff-wifi-switch-with-arduino-ide-402e5a2f77b). You can buy a 4CH Sonoff wifi switch for like $15 and flash it (https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/wiki/Sonoff-4CH-and-4CH-Pro). You end up with a fully functional and versatile programmable 'power bar'. You then don't necessarily need to code any logic and you can rely on 3rd party apps to ensure your IOT devices behave as expected. I like being able to monitor/manage my tank alongside any other devices in my apartment.

 

Wherever I am, everything is controllable from my phone, here is an example of my Homekit shortcuts on my phone which includes some aquarium specific items (temp, mangrove light on the screenshot below). I have a chiller on my tank but if the temperature of the aquarium reach a certain threshold (aka the chiller had fail), it will automatically turn the AC on. 

 

 

 

 

[ninjamyst]

i really don't like how they sell freshwater fish in plastic bags hanging on the wall =(.  The saltwater fish are also in REALLY small baskets.  It was sad to see powder brown tangs in a 6" by 6" basket.  But damn they are CHEAP.  Didn't see much corals though.  

[dandelion]

18 minutes ago, madtrax said:

Thanks !

 

Totally agree, it makes life easier to have all the LFS in the same street, the downside is that you have more temptations and always 'wonder' what's next door 😄 I have seen a lot of crazy stuff tho.

 

The main problem with LFS in Hong Kong, in my opinion, is that most of the fish (and also corals) are in really poor health and they usually only last few days if you don't have a proper QT setup. Sure they are really cheap (relative to US for instance) but the survival rate is very low. There is a big second-hand market where people trade corals and fish which are in much better condition (http://seafishzone.com)

 

And yes, I have seen many overcrowded tanks (on this second-hand website) where it's really sad to see. We probably don't have the same notion of space as we are used to small apartments indeed : )

 

 

I originally planed to used it with individual dosing pumps but ended up buying a proper doser, the BM T11 which ends up being almost cheaper. I only use the Raspberry now which I use as a Homekit bridge (see https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge) to control several stuff like my A/C, fan, mangrove light, temp. probe and does the reading of the Seneye.

 

I have transitioned some of my stuff to super cheap and reliable Sonoff wifi switches (https://www.itead.cc/smart-home/sonoff-wifi-wireless-switch.html) with custom firmware (https://medium.com/@jeffreyroshan/flashing-a-custom-firmware-to-sonoff-wifi-switch-with-arduino-ide-402e5a2f77b). You can buy a 4CH Sonoff wifi switch for like $15 and flash it (https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/wiki/Sonoff-4CH-and-4CH-Pro). You end up with a fully functional and versatile programmable 'power bar'. You then don't necessarily need to code any logic and you can rely on 3rd party apps to ensure your IOT devices behave as expected. I like being able to monitor/manage my tank alongside any other devices in my apartment.

 

Wherever I am, everything is controllable from my phone, here is an example of my Homekit shortcuts on my phone which includes some aquarium specific items (temp, mangrove light on the screenshot below). I have a chiller on my tank but if the temperature of the aquarium reach a certain threshold (aka the chiller had fail), it will automatically turn the AC on. 

 

 

 

 

Wow you surely are a loyal fruit store employee. Most of the IoT I have only works with google home or Alexa. How do you get the temperature of your tank to work with HomeKit? You have a temp probe on a raspberry pi or something? I should look more into raspberry pi now that you mentioned it can be a bridge for home kit. Hopefully my programming 101 skills would be sufficient for this fun project.

 

And let’s hope the firewall on my router is good enough that nobody can hack into my tank and cook my fish.

[madtrax]

12 minutes ago, ninjamyst said:

i really don't like how they sell freshwater fish in plastic bags hanging on the wall =(.  The saltwater fish are also in REALLY small baskets.  It was sad to see powder brown tangs in a 6" by 6" basket.  But damn they are CHEAP.  Didn't see much corals though.  

Yeah definitely, it shocked me as well the first time I saw that. It's really like 'grab & go' as you would pick a can of coke at a 7/11. They must sell quite a lot of them... even the saltwater, I don't think they survive long in the LFS (like a week of two).

 

Corals are relatively harder to find, I think FOT are more common in Hong Kong (easier too). You can find more corals if you actually go up the floors in all these buildings. The varieties of corals is pretty low too, it's not like in US where you can actually order some fancy SPS and Zoas. 

[dandelion]

1 minute ago, madtrax said:

Yeah definitely, it shocked me as well the first time I saw that. It's really like 'grab & go' as you would pick a can of coke at a 7/11. They must sell quite a lot of them... even the saltwater, I don't think they survive long in the LFS (like a week of two).

 

Corals are relatively harder to find, I think FOT are more common in Hong Kong (easier too). You can find more corals if you actually go up the floors in all these buildings. The varieties of corals is pretty low too, it's not like in US where you can actually order some fancy SPS and Zoas. 

I wasn’t looking for live stock the other time I was there so I didn’t pay attention. I thought it being a subtropical coastal city would make it far easier to get corals.

[madtrax]

5 minutes ago, dandelion said:

Wow you surely are a loyal fruit store employee. Most of the IoT I have only works with google home or Alexa. How do you get the temperature of your tank to work with HomeKit? You have a temp probe on a raspberry pi or something? I should look more into raspberry pi now that you mentioned it can be a bridge for home kit. Hopefully my programming 101 skills would be sufficient for this fun project.

 

And let’s hope the firewall on my router is good enough that nobody can hack into my tank and cook my fish.

Haha, not really, if I had an Android, I would have gone the Google Home or Alexa way instead of hacking my way into Homekit. Alexa for instance is also more flexible and allows you to do more exotic stuff whereas Homekit is pretty rigid in what/how it supports stuff. 

 

I get the temperature of the aquarium by reading the USB output of the Seneye Reef but you could use a very straightforward probe like the DS18B20 (like this https://thepihut.com/blogs/raspberry-pi-tutorials/18095732-sensors-temperature-with-the-1-wire-interface-and-the-ds18b20) 

 

[kristonenicolas]

Gorgeous tank!

 

Do you mind explaining to me how you hung your hydras the way you did? Thanks!

[madtrax]

On 1/5/2019 at 9:56 AM, kristonenicolas said:

Gorgeous tank!

 

Do you mind explaining to me how you hung your hydras the way you did? Thanks!

Thanks!

 

It's actually pretty straightforward, there is a concrete border on the ceiling where I simply drilled two holes to hang the two Hydras using 'standard' suspension cables. Here is a quick picture.

 

 

 

[kristonenicolas]

On 1/7/2019 at 3:19 AM, madtrax said:

Thanks!

 

It's actually pretty straightforward, there is a concrete border on the ceiling where I simply drilled two holes to hang the two Hydras using 'standard' suspension cables. Here is a quick picture.

 

 

 

Ahh I see! What did you use to connect the two Hydras together?

[madtrax]

19 hours ago, kristonenicolas said:

Ahh I see! What did you use to connect the two Hydras together?

I used the 'official' accessory (I couldn't find it in white/metal colour tho)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0093Y55J0

 

Honestly, it's quite expensive for a piece of aluminium and you can probably build one yourself.

[kristonenicolas]

On ‎1‎/‎9‎/‎2019 at 7:54 PM, madtrax said:

I used the 'official' accessory (I couldn't find it in white/metal colour tho)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0093Y55J0

 

Honestly, it's quite expensive for a piece of aluminium and you can probably build one yourself.

What size EXT bar is that? 6"?

[Christopher Marks]

How is your long shallow nano reef doing these days @madtrax? Have you had any more trouble with the Hydra26 lights? I'd love to see how the mangroves are coming along 🙂 

[OptiKen]

Amazing!

[kabal2]

wow i just read it all, nice beautiful tank any new updates?