--> 156 gallon reef build <--

[YLChik]

Originally Posted by crvz

Bad news this morning... I've been keeping my eye on the little ocellaris, and one of them didnt make it through the night (tear). They were a little undersized, and I think spooked by the other fish in the tank. I'll spare the details, but I think I'll try to find a bigger one at one of the LFS in the area sometime this week. Hopefully that will help give the other one a fighting chance.

[Wiskey]

Originally Posted by crvz

Bad news this morning... I've been keeping my eye on the little ocellaris, and one of them didnt make it through the night (tear). They were a little undersized, and I think spooked by the other fish in the tank. I'll spare the details, but I think I'll try to find a bigger one at one of the LFS in the area sometime this week. Hopefully that will help give the other one a fighting chance.

That stinks Were they ORA tank rased clowns by chance? I only ask because I've had some trouble keeping them alive in the past,.. my two now are big and doing well, but I had a few that I lost right when I got them.

Whiskey

[crvz]

Maybe the parents were, I dont know, but these little dudes were locally bred. I assume I can get another small ocellaris and they will likely still pair up down the road. Did yours pair up, Whiskey?

[Wiskey]

Oh ya,.. mine host in the same leather, there always together, and they do their little dance thing, they have yet to lay eggs though,.. there getting to be big enough now where they might start soon.

Whiskey

[crvz]

Long time, no update!

Good news. Actually, a major milestone. I've completed the frame!!! Here's me screwing in the final screws. The only thing left is to put the base on top, which increase the total height to very near 43". This thing is amazingly solid, too. Based on enginerding calculations, it should hold near 4000lbs, so I've got at least a safety factor of 2 here.




Muuh ha ha! Anyways, here is a shot of the joints. The first one is of the bottom, but the stand is upside down (as it is in the previous picture). You can see the number of pieces of the wood here.



And here is the top (but again, upside down). Four pieces of wood, including two 2x6's to keep the thing from wanting to shift from front to back.




Now it's on to the oak skin and canopy!

[crvz]

A few posts back I mentioned how the stand wasn't lining up well, and that the floor was mostly the problem. While that's true, we also made the mistake of cranking everything down on the bottom, then going to work on the top. This is kind of stupid, at least to me, because it's more important for the top to be lined up, as it's much easier to shim the bottom. That's the reason this is upside down in the pictures; we bothered with the top first, and then once that was lined up we got to work on the bottom. Anyways, it felt really good to get that part done yesterday, and I want to think it's all down-hill from here, but I'm not quite stupid enough to believe that! At least in terms of structural support, I won't be worrying about anything.

[Wiskey]

Very nice! That stand looks great! Awsome work.

Whiskey

[crvz]

Thanks, Whiskey! I had to check back a little, but it was only 4 weeks from lumber to structure, and at about 4 hours a week of work thats not too terrible. I have a few days off next week, so maybe I'll get some water in it before July.

[Wiskey]

No, that's not bad at all actually, espeically with all the jigs you had to make to do all the special cuts to key that tothether, it fits together like a puzzle rather than the boards just butting up agenst each other, that will add allot in the way of strenghth, especially in the lateral direction (Shear).

Now it's onto the facing, and all the finish work that goes with that eh? Good luck! If you take the same care with that it will look really nice.

Whiskey

[crvz]

Relatively uninteresting update, but maybe it will give someone an idea. The other day I stuck my hand on the fan over my sump, and much to my surprise it was trying to charge me. Seeing that I don't run on batteries, I expected something was feeding back current through the circuit, hence the shock I was feeling on the housing of the fan. Turns out, my 120VAC solenoids had been exposed to too much humidity (recently started relying more on evaporative cooling in the sump) and were, for lack of a better term, shot. I decided to replace them with some 12VDC solenoids, which I felt would be much safer. I ordered two part number 7877k55 from mcmaster, specified 12VDC voltage and they showed up today. Here is a shot of the old 12VAC units I was using, and you can see the new one on the side (black).



I had to steal the JG fittings from the old solenoids, but that was no problem. Here is a new solenoid with the fittings in place (I used a little teflon tape).



Then I grabbed a spair 12V power source. I was hoping to get away with the 150mA unit, as it's a little smaller plug (and I'm hoping to stick this on the powerstrip of my aquacontroller), but it didnt spit out enough amperage to fire both solenoids, so I jumped up to a 450mA unit (these are from old coralife fans that I've salvaged... glad I didnt throw them away!).



So here it is wired up in place. I wired the solenoids in parallel, though I didnt really think it through when I hooked it up. I can't think of a good reason to have wired them in series...



I also hooked it up to the RODI in the bathroom to do a pressure test, and unfortunately it leaked at first. Turns out, one of the seats of the new solenoids didnt quite work. Looking at it, it's not to hard to expect, but fortunately I had a number of other seats from the old solenoids. Here is a shot of the guts of the solenoids.



These solenoids claim to work to up to 100 psi (for the DC units), and I can't imagine that my house water pressure is greater than that. If you look in the picture, water flows from the top of the JG fitting and into the housing. The little pinhole you can see in the middle of the black part between the two JG fittings is where the water flows out of the housing. When unpowered, the silver metal part is held against the pinhole with a spring. When powered, the silver metal part is pulled away from the pinhole, and water flows through the housing. On the one that didnt work, the metal part didnt seat flush against the housing pinhole, hence the leak. I swapped it out for another, and it works well now. Right now I've got it unpowered and under pressure to make sure it doesnt leak (probably leave it for a day or so). I also contacted mcmaster, as they've always been extremely helpful with this kind of stuff.

Anyways, probably more thorough than anyone cares, but I don't mind putting out the full story. Fortunately this took just long enough to get to the Rockets tipoff, so I must bid all my fellow reef dorks good day!

[Wiskey]

You don't run on batteries either eh? Hmm,.. We all need to get together one day and look into that,.. sure would save time on sleep.

That's a slick setup you got there, thanks for the rundown,.. one question though,.. that copper exposed in the last pic,.. is water aloud to contact that? Or is there a diaphram between the water side and the copper part?

I never throw out power bricks,.. they always come in handy!

Whiskey

[crvz]

You've got some good eyes there, Whiskey. When folks first started using these solenoids, that was a pretty big concern. The brass fitting absolutely is in contact with the RO/DI water. But ultimately, after years of use (I've had them for about 14 months), no one has noticed any issues of copper leaching into their tanks. I'll take a closer look at the one's I just released for pitting or any other sign of wear, but I'd be surprised if something shows up.

[Wiskey]

I think there is still cause for consern, RO/DI water is in a un-natural state, and it trys to pull minerals back in, it's where the term "Hungry water" came from. For the same reason you don't want to use RO/DI, or distilled water in your car radiator, it will pull metal out of your block and rad.

I agree that if this was happening quickly you would see pitting on the surface of the brass peice, but if it were me I would still be conserned.

Whiskey

[crvz]

Alright, I took a look at the shaft a little more. The only brass part is the threaded part, the inside is actually stainless steel. So, while there is a tiny part that would be exposed to water (the part that hits the o-ring seal), the majority of the part is stainless steel. Thus, I'm not too concerned. Also, I found no pitting or other wear on it. It's a little hard to see anything in the picture, but I'm pretty confident that I won't have any trouble. One test I'm doing, though, is that I put a shaft in a small amount of RODI water. I'm going to test it in a week, and then another week later to see if anything comes up.

[Wiskey]

Cool deal,.. Keep the RO/DI your testing with tightly sealed to prevent it from pulling junk from the air in and let us know what you find out,.. I'm intrested to know.

Whiskey