Equipment

Wandering alkalinity

melev — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 18:26:52 +0000

Wandering alkalinity melev Wed, 03/22/2023 - 21:26

I feel like I blog about calcium reactor stuff a lot. I wonder if I would do the same with 2-part dosing? lol

Last Sunday, I did a 100g water change on the reef. I pumped out all the water out of the skimmer zone, and the return zone, and then more water out of the reef aquarium itself. I refilled it with new saltwater, and went about my normal life.

The next day, I noticed my alkalinity had dropped a bit, which was a little strange. The Trident gives me updates regularly, and helps me stay aware of this number. An odd reading isn't a concern, but a few of them makes me investigate further. I immediately mixed up two tablespoons of soda ash with some RO water, and trickled that into the reef to keep the alkalinity stable.

I looked at the reactor and the surrounding area, and discovered that my little prefilter was bobbing on the surface like a cork, rather than being fully submerged so it can suck in water that feeds my calcium reactor. Once that was addressed, I watched the Versa pump but water wasn't moving. I replaced the tubing in the Versa, and greased the gears. Next I calibrated the dosing pump to make sure it was running at the correct rate. It was, so I reconnected the line to the calcium reactor so it could resume flow. I turned off the calcium reactor's circulation pump so it would purge out any trapped air.

The next day (yesterday) I saw another notification that my alkalinity again had dropped below my preferred threshold (less than 7.9 dKH). Again, I mixed up another 2 tablespoons of soda ash, and added that to my reef to keep the dKH above 8.0.

It was time to measure the reactor's effluent to see what that alkalinity measured. It should be between 19 and 35 dKH. My test result: 8 dKH. No wonder the number in the reef was dropping, it wasn't getting enough via the effluent because the solution was weak. Why? Because I never turned that recirculating pump back on! I flipped the switch, waiting 20 minutes, and then tested the effluent again. Now it measured 26 dKH - perfect.

And today, the reef's alkalinity is already up to 8.44 and rising back toward my desired 9.0 range.

Reef keeping will keep you on your toes, and the trick is to #1) don't forget to turn things on, and #2) stay aware of what the latest notifications report.

... and now I need to figure out why one of my leak sensor got wet at 5 a.m. this morning, which created some other minor drama for me.

Reef Blog

Generator Tested and Ready to Go

melev — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 01:37:28 +0000

Generator Tested and Ready to Go

Be prepared

melev Mon, 03/21/2022 - 04:37

The weather was in the 70's today, so I made the time to test the new generator I'd purchased a year ago. Fortunately, I haven't needed it, but you know when you do need it, the wind is howling, it's pitch dark, it's cold and wet...

The new generator is a big improvement over the previous one. This one accepts gasoline, natural gas, or propane, and it has a battery to start the engine instead of having to pull the cord like a lawnmower. It was on sale at Costco and the moment I spotted it, I quickly found a cart to haul it to the register since it was rated up to 50 amps. That will provide power for my reef room as well as the fridge, television and more.

When I first brought it home, I got it assembled, added the oil the crank case, and tucked it away for the next power outage. Luckily that hasn't happened yet. I only realized recently that the extension cord I have been using would not fit into the outlet of the generator, so I replaced it with a newer one. Once this was accomplished I added half a tank of fresh gasoline, and pressed the start button. It fired up immediately, and I let it run for about 25 minutes. While it was on, I simulated a power outage by shutting off the breaker that powers the fishroom, then hooked up my temporary cord to see how things worked. All went well.

This generator also has a safety feature my older one didn't have: if the CO2 levels rise too high, it will shut itself off. Since it is rated to run outdoors in any weather, that won't be an issue. If someone tried to run it inside of a building or shed, it would turn off to protect human life.

The general rule of thumb is to test your generator monthly, something I've never done. The benefit of doing so is to make sure it works when you really need it, plus in my case, it will recharge that battery for the easy-start option. Now I just need to make monthly testing part of my routine.

Reef Blog

DI resin should to be spent by now...

melev — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 03:23:32 +0000

DI resin should to be spent by now...

Suspect everything when you want to solve an issue

melev Thu, 06/10/2021 - 06:23

For the first six months of this year, my reef has been dealing with some strange losses that I haven't been able to positively pin on any one culprit. I've sent several water samples for ICP testing from two different companies, both of which agree my nitrates are much too high.

But could it be anything else? One thing that hit me was how old my DI cartridge is. It has been fully orange for a long time, but the TDS coming out of it continues to measure 0. Granted, the TDS going into the resin is 2, so it should last a long time. Today I wondered if maybe my TDS meter is giving me a faulty reading, that the water isn't coming out zero at all. The odds that both probes are bad is highly unlikely, but looking at the resin there is no trace of the original dark color I'm used to seeing.

Regardless of the numbers, I decided to just change out the cartridge. Additionally, the pre-filter set of filters were changed.

Will I now see some improvement in my reef? After all, I use RODI water for top off daily, so making sure the water going in is pure is and always has been my #1 priority. Waiting for the TDS to start rising seems silly, when I can swap out everything so easily.

Brand new DI cartridge installed.

Reef Blog

Versa pump calibration

melev — Wed, 27 May 2020 16:52:58 +0000

Versa pump calibration melev Wed, 05/27/2020 - 19:52

I have a Versa (single head) pump that is feeding my calcium reactor. I've had it running for months. Recently, it appeared that the calcium reactor's effluent was flowing at a lesser than usual amount, and I checked for any obstructions. All was well. In theory, nothing was clogged. I didn't remove the reactor for a full cleaning, I just checked some of the obvious points.

I opened up Mobius (the app that controls the Versa pump) last night to see that the programming was still the same: Continuous duty, 60ml per minute. Next, I held a specimen cup under the output and watched the fluid it collected in 60 seconds. It measured about 20ml, so I was right that the output was quite a bit slower.

I tapped to the calibration menu in Mobius, and recalibrated the desired amount (60ml @ 1 minute), let it run and added a manual correction as the app requested, and then retested it again for accuracy. Now that it was metering out what I programmed, the pump was physically running faster and was semi-audible when I was near it. The flow rate of the effluent was visually more than I wanted (I like it to be a slow trickle), so I adjusted the Versa via Mobius to run at 50 ml per minute.

Now it's doing what I want, quietly.

Reef Blog

Faulty wiring discovered

melev — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 14:17:36 +0000

Faulty wiring discovered melev Mon, 04/27/2020 - 17:17

It seems like lately most of my blogs seem to be about the Apex. I'll try to work on that and add some other things in here from time to time.

The Apex saved my home. Sorta. For the past couple of days, I was getting Power Lost alerts from Fusion, yet everything was on. The reef was normal, tv was normal, internet was normal, the only thing I was seeing was the lights in the bathrooms would flicker a little and I assumed it was brownouts.

Saturday night as I was heading to bed, I heard the tiny bip that the Apex Display Module does when an alarm is on. I checked the alarm, power was off but clearly it was on. Decided to go to bed, and investigate in the morning. When I got up, I had about 9 duplicate alarms, for every hour I slept saying power was out.

My Apex brain is plugged into the Eb832, and I have the black power supply plugged into a UPS for backup. My assumption was the UPS is having issues, so I removed it from the electrical cabinet and plugged in into a different outlet in the kitchen. The UPS started wailing, and a light appeared on the side, next to the words "Crossed wiring."

I recently bought this gizmo to quickly check outlets. You want two yellow lights on the right, but it was showing red and yellow. No bueno. I checked each outlet in the kitchen, and discovered one circuit has been wired wrong for -- 20 years -- and no-one has ever noticed it despite work being done in the house, let alone the original home inspection that was performed when I purchased the house.

This circuit includes my microwave, which from time to time would pop the circuit for no reason. I couldn't make it happen on demand, it just did it once a while and I'd have to reset the breaker. This plug (below) was behind the microwave, 100% out of sight. I pulled out the outlet and visually discovered that the black wire and white wire were on the wrong sides. Black always is on the right side of this type of outlet, white on the left.

Yesterday, I replaced one outlet since it is used so much. The screws on the side of outlets indicate which side gets the white & black wires (the screws are silver and bronze colored, basically), and the markings on the back state the correct way to wire it, too. I bought a "commercial" grade 15 amp outlet, which was about $1.25 more than the regular wall outlet.

All of those outlets are now fixed and I verified a bunch more outlets in my house while I had the tester handy. I still need to get the UPS checked out but now you know how the Apex saved my house.

#powertrip #ThanksNeptuneSystems

Reef Blog

Fits like a glove

melev — Sat, 11 Apr 2020 19:11:35 +0000

Fits like a glove melev Sat, 04/11/2020 - 22:11

Since I started using a calcium reactor back in 2004, I've always had 5lb aluminum or steel cylinders, and I have to refill them a few times a year. For the most part, a local liquor store would refill empty bottles for a nominal amount. A couple of years ago, the owner got a tad picky about said bottles (from others) and demanded that every sticker be removed or they would refuse service. This included the brand of the cylinder, any logos, you name it. Employees even felt this was a tad silly, but everyone had to comply. I stood there at the counter chiseling away ancient labels until it was an unmarked cylinder, then they could take it to the back and 15 minutes later I'd have a full bottle again. I believe each refill was about $12 or so.

I've used a few bottles, as it is really nice having a full backup bottle at the ready when one is empty. However, they don't last forever it seems. Stamped into the metal, a date states when the bottle was last inspected, which usually gives you about five years until you have to have each one reinspected for safety reasons. The inspection tends to cost about $40 or so, and a brand new bottles costs $80. It's just a minor inconvenience, but the hassle factor made me stop using older bottles and rely on the ones that were still within the timestamp.

Today, I took both bottles I had to the welding supplier instead of the liquor store. I wanted to fill both so the reef would have adequate CO2 for the next few months. Quickly, they took the cylinders into the shop and proceeded to fill them up. About 10 minutes later a young man brought them to me and told me there was no charge. When I asked why, he informed me that they weren't able to fill them, that each bottle had 1 lb of CO2 in the tank. Knowing that was rather pointless, I decided I better just buy a new standard bottle: a 20 lb cylinder. Those are the ones used in restaurants and bars for soda and beer. Refills are $20 per tank. They had a brand new one ready to go, full of C02. $135 + tax, and I was on my way.

I wondered if it would fit inside the electrical/equipment station where I've always had the cylinder before. If it didn't fit there, I'd have to find a good spot to put it and wasn't really sure that I had a suitable location available. Miraculously, it ended up fitting exactly in the available space inside the stand, a stand I'd assembled back in 2011. I couldn't be more happy about that.

Here's a tank comparison picture. The new one should last a long time, maybe more than a year. That would be nice.

Truly, it's about time. I resisted as long as I could, but I'm going to just embrace the new purchase and not think about the cost. :)

Reef Blog

Trident controlled Calcium Reactor

melev — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 14:11:27 +0000

Trident controlled Calcium Reactor melev Tue, 09/24/2019 - 17:11

Since 2004, I've used a calcium reactor to maintain alkalinity and calcium in my reef tanks. It's a semi-simple setup, with a few necessary components. I have an article about how it is set up here: https://www.melevsreef.com/articles/how-set-calcium-reactor

The Trident is a Neptune Systems water testing device that measures alkalinity, calcium and magnesium, and results are saved by the Apex controller. After a few months, I decided I'd like to have my Apex control the calcium reactor based on current water parameters. This part is more complex, because the Trident measures alkalinity every six hours rather than constant up-to-the-minute readings. If you were to simply use an on/off approach, in theory you would stop adding any alkalinity to the tank for the next six hours, awaiting the next testing results to determine what should be dosed or not. It's possible the reactor would need to play catch-up as soon as the Trident measures a lowered reading - calling for more. My friend Duane wrote some code to limit how long the calcium reactor runs, rather than shutting it off entirely. This made sense.

For ease of copy & paste, here's the actual code:

Set ON
If Alk > 9.00 Then OFF

OSC 005:00/015:00/000:00 Then ON
If Output CaRx-maximum = ON Then OFF

Fallback ON
Set ON
If CaRx_pH > 6.6 Then ON
If CaRx_pH < 6.5 Then OFF
If Output CaRx-limiter = ON Then OFF

The following is the breakdown with visuals to help explain what is going on.

I have a couple of virtual switches that help control the calcium reactor. I run the AquariumPlants Carbon Doser (electronic regulator), which is plugged into one out of my Eb-832 power brick outlets. The Apex turns the Co2 on or off. The calcium reactor and all other associated gear continues to run the entire time.

This is what it the main tile looks like in Apex Fusion, with the extra virtual switches and one named outlet:

If you look at CaRx-Limiter (a virtual switch) above, you’ll see it is "on." The reason it is on is because the Trident reports that my alkalinity is higher than 9 dKH, and thus I don't want to melt any more media at the moment.

Next: This is CaRx-Maximum (a second virtual switch), which basically tells the CO2 to always be on, UNLESS alkalinity has risen higher than 9.0. CaRx-Maximum means the reactor runs constantly, unabated. The regulator has power to its solenoid constantly, unless controlled:

Below is the CaRx-Limiter code. Please note that the OSC command is actually written backward yet works. If I understand OSC correctly, the first number (005:00) means 5 minutes ON, then the second number (015:00) means 15 minutes off. Basically, out of every hour, my CaRx is running normally for 15 minutes, then the CO2 is limited (turned off) for 45 minutes. OSC does this in short bursts instead of a single duration like 15 minutes on, 45 minutes off. Hope that makes sense. On 5, off 15, on 5, off 15... for the full six hour period. **You may decide you need to change those individual durations to get the least amount of swing.

This is the Co2 code. The outlet is always ON, unless the virtual switch CaRx-Limiter is ON. Then it shuts off the power to the regulator and no Co2 gets to the calcium reactor:

OPTION #1 (this is how mine is set up, because I use a Milwaukee pH controller to measure pH in the reactor)

OPTION #2 (if you use the Apex to monitor the pH in the calcium reactor, this is the code you'll want to use)

Keep in mind that you may need to adjust the pH level in your own code to match the system's demand. In the above code, what happens on Line 3 is when the pH rises above 6.6 (in the reactor), the CO2 is flowing (aka ON). Line 4 dictates if the pH measures less than 6.5 (ie: 6.49 or less), CO2 flow is OFF.

I've been running with this method for about 3 months, and it has kept the Alkalinity right around 9.0 dKH regularly. The slight dip you see in the next image is when I recently ran calibration testing to make sure my readings were repeatedly accurate.

Other details, not really related but on topic:

The Versa pump pushes tank water into the reactor at the rate of 50ml per minute.
pH in my reactor is set to 6.8
Carbon Doser bubble counter is roughly 1.5 bubbles per second.

If you have any questions, ask.

Reef Blog

Trident testing - after 8 weeks

melev — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 12:39:13 +0000

Trident testing - after 8 weeks melev Tue, 06/04/2019 - 15:39

Eight weeks ago, I installed the Trident automatic tester to my 400g reef. It is made for the Apex controller. Four times a day, the machine whirrs to life and measures alkalinity, calcium and magnesium. I tend to check the numbers constantly, and know the results are usually less than six hours old. It's allowed me to be "lazy, yet informed" and I love it.

With the information it provides, I can decide if I want to adjust the calcium reactor's internal pH level higher or lower. When the pH in the reactor is higher, it melts less media and reduces the dKH of the effluent. Conversely if the pH is lower, the media melts faster and increases the dKH coming out of the reactor. For the typical reefkeeper, measuring alkalinity is performed a few times a week if you want to keep SPS corals. Armed with that knowledge, I can quickly make a tiny adjustment to dial in that exact level I desire. My calcium reactor also provides calcium so that's a 'whatever' number, because I don't ever add liquid calcium by itself. The Trident's Magnesium results help me decide if I need to increase or decrease the amount of Magnesium Pronto my dosing pump pushes in each day. I decided to dose a small amount each day just to observe the Trident's graph - I wanted to see the number trending upwards. And that's exactly what it did.

Today I went ahead and looked at the weekly averages of each of those three tests, and compiled the data below. My target goal for Alkalinity is 9.3 dKH, and I've nearly got my system tweaked to keep it right where I want it. Calcium and Magnesium are less important *to me* in comparison, but I included them while I had the graphs open in front of me. Magnesium seems to be higher than necessary, so I'll stop dosing that for a few weeks.

I'm going to be running the Calibration test solution through the Trident in a few weeks, and will also test that solution with my own test kits to see how close they are.

Reef Blog

When your protein skimmer keeps overflowing, try this

melev — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 13:23:34 +0000

When your protein skimmer keeps overflowing, try this melev Fri, 02/01/2019 - 16:23

From time to time our protein skimmers decide to overflow constantly, usually right back into the sump or even worse all over the cabinet and nearby floor. Typically this is caused by adding something to the water, like Chemi-Clean/RedCyano Rx, or it perhaps a food like Reefbooster. Skimmers also can be affected by changes in weather when the barometric pressure drops in your area. Another cause could be the use of new filter socks.

**Whenever a storm approaches, I highly recommend you clean out the collection cup of any skimmate so it doesn't end up back in the sump.**

I made this video to show you how I overcome the problem in a matter of hours, rather than shutting off the protein skimmer for days out of frustration... which people often tell me they do. Shut off your top off system, let the skimmer drain into a nearby bucket and replenish the tank with more saltwater to replace what has been wasted. If you do this, within a few hours the skimmer will be running like usual once more. Now turn the top off system again, and enjoy your reef.

If your protein skimmer always overflows, this is an entirely different topic and you will have to determine the cause. The most likely situation is the water level in the skimmer zone is too deep, and your skimmer needs to be placed on a stand to elevate it to the recommended depth. I sell skimmer stands if you need one.

Reef Blog

Oooh, that's chilly!

melev — Sun, 20 Jan 2019 22:27:30 +0000

Oooh, that's chilly! melev Mon, 01/21/2019 - 01:27

I discovered a missing line in my Apex code tonight. It's programming is coded to have it notify me via alarm, email and push notification if the tank gets too cold. That would be for my 400g. However, I never added an extra line of code for the separate frag system. Oops! Three years later, I find this out. Wow.

That secondary tank felt quite cold and I realized I've not paid much attention to the water temperature of that system. Going back through the Apex logs, I discovered the heater for that tank failed on December 26th, and the tank has been running cooler for weeks, ever since.

During the day time it was about right in number, so I never caught on or noticed a problem. But it was rather chilly when I dipped my hand into the tank to grab the inner cleaning magnet two hours ago. Over the past few days, based on the graph I quickly checked, it's gotten as low as 73.8°F!

The heater was getting power from the EB8, and the light was blinking on the heater itself (so it was on) but it wasn't providing any heat any longer. This heater has been in use for almost three years, so replacing it wasn't a big deal nor untimely. I put in a new 100w Neotherm to replace the old one. Here's my new line of code, highlighted:

Tmp is the thermometer reading of the 400g, Tmpx9 is the thermometer reading of the 60g frag system.

Now that my alerts are updated, I'll get notified in the future if the tank's temperature dips too low again. In the meantime, the temperature is slowly rising to my desired setpoint.

Reef Blog