A 750g SPS system is born
- Thread starter dgasmd
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Travis
SPS Obsessed
Alberto, you can do the whole web server thingie with the ACII as long as you have it connected to your PC with a serial cable. Then you just let your PC be the web server (can be done with windows xp pro). I don't use the internet access feature anyways for a couple reasons. First, the only way you can access your aqucontroller from a remote location via the internet is if the pc you are using has the Aquanotes software installed on it. Now seriously, who carries their Aquanotes install disk everywhere they go? Second, I don't feel confident using my computer as a web server because it could be more liable to get hacked and I don't have the computer knowledge to make sure it is set up safely.
One nice thing you can do is have aquanotes send info to your website every few minutes so it displays your current water parameters and AC settings on your website. This way, if you are out of town you can just load your webpage and check on your tank conditions if you get paranoid about something. I know JBNY does this but he is also a computer tech so he knows what he is doing. I have no idea how to set it up this way.
If you are going to bite the bullet and spend the money on an aquacontroller you might as well use it to the best of its abilities and use the email command function in Aquanotes. You can either hook your AC to your PC with a serial cable and have it use your PC modem to email your cell phone in the event of an alarm condition. Or I believe you can also do this by just having a cheap dial-up modem connected to your Aquacontroller. Not sure if this would work with the email function but should at least work with the page function. I don't know much about the dial-up modem connection or the page function as I don't use them.
One nice thing you can do is have aquanotes send info to your website every few minutes so it displays your current water parameters and AC settings on your website. This way, if you are out of town you can just load your webpage and check on your tank conditions if you get paranoid about something. I know JBNY does this but he is also a computer tech so he knows what he is doing. I have no idea how to set it up this way.
If you are going to bite the bullet and spend the money on an aquacontroller you might as well use it to the best of its abilities and use the email command function in Aquanotes. You can either hook your AC to your PC with a serial cable and have it use your PC modem to email your cell phone in the event of an alarm condition. Or I believe you can also do this by just having a cheap dial-up modem connected to your Aquacontroller. Not sure if this would work with the email function but should at least work with the page function. I don't know much about the dial-up modem connection or the page function as I don't use them.
Travis:
I hear you and wht you are saying has some value. I just don't think it is something I would personally use or make significant use of. I mostly need it to alarm inside the house so my house can notify me of something wrong. The only significant thing I would want to know is temperture problems because it would mean a chiller failure. the rest of the stuff I couldn't even think of a way to mess it up significantly for me to consider it an emergency. Even if my litermeter were to go crazy and dumped the entire 55g top off container in the sump, not that much of anything will change. Even more so enough to make me leave work to do something about it. Temperature (chiller failure) and power failure would be the 2 main things I would consider an emergency.
With the chiller failure I would have an audible alarm and the ability to turn some things off. With the power failure I have a few hours of buffer. Even when I leave town for a few days, the person in charge of my tank is actually a 15 y.o. girl that lives 3 doors down that also walks my dogs. Her family is home all the time, so if there is a power failure I can be notified no matter where I am. Why did I pick her? Because she knows nothing about the tank and it is so intimidated by it that she can't possibly ever develop the courage or initiative to try to "fix" something in my absence without asking me first.
I hear you and wht you are saying has some value. I just don't think it is something I would personally use or make significant use of. I mostly need it to alarm inside the house so my house can notify me of something wrong. The only significant thing I would want to know is temperture problems because it would mean a chiller failure. the rest of the stuff I couldn't even think of a way to mess it up significantly for me to consider it an emergency. Even if my litermeter were to go crazy and dumped the entire 55g top off container in the sump, not that much of anything will change. Even more so enough to make me leave work to do something about it. Temperature (chiller failure) and power failure would be the 2 main things I would consider an emergency.
With the chiller failure I would have an audible alarm and the ability to turn some things off. With the power failure I have a few hours of buffer. Even when I leave town for a few days, the person in charge of my tank is actually a 15 y.o. girl that lives 3 doors down that also walks my dogs. Her family is home all the time, so if there is a power failure I can be notified no matter where I am. Why did I pick her? Because she knows nothing about the tank and it is so intimidated by it that she can't possibly ever develop the courage or initiative to try to "fix" something in my absence without asking me first.
Travis
SPS Obsessed
I just had to bring it up because I lost my 75 to a kalk disaster a couple years ago. That was my main reasoning behind purchasing an AC for this tank. My overflow drain got a blockage and water started to overflow the tank. The top-off all went through a kalk reactor on a float switch in the sump. Had I had an AC at the time set to call me if the ph was too high I possibly could have saved the tank before my top off added 15 gallons of kalk. But I see you are dosing kalk with a LM so you don't have to worry about that anyways (as am I currently). But there is always murphy out there nagging at us. The thing that may go wrong some day would be that thing you never thought of. One example would be a CO2 regulator failure. BTW, you can get your AC to call you when the power goes out. You just need to have the computer on a battery back-up (pretty cheap).
It sounds like you have a good tank sitter. Someone that is scared of the beast will not be likely to mess up on tank sitting instructions. If they do they would be more likely to call you ASAP.
It sounds like you have a good tank sitter. Someone that is scared of the beast will not be likely to mess up on tank sitting instructions. If they do they would be more likely to call you ASAP.
Travis:
What happened to you with your kalk disaster is the very same reason I ahve a litermeter for top off. Making the sytem automatic and hands off is a great concept, but a flawed one when there is dependency among the automatic parts. It makes the entire tank as solid as the weakest link. About 2 years ago before I went on vacation for 10 days to the Turks and Caicos, I spent the afternoon cleaning and topping everything off in my previous system to make sure I left the least amount of things to do for my sitter at the time, which was my neighbor. He was the male 35 y.o. version of my current sitter. I completely overlooked the fact that I had gotten lazy over the months before and had not cleaned the rollers in my LM, so I took them out, cleaned them, and replaced them. Well, over the last few months I had been increasing the rate in the pump to compensate for the dirtier and dirtier rollers. I didn't set it back after I was done cleaning. Needless to say, 48 hours later I get an emergency call from my neighbor telling me that he got home and he sees water coming out of my garage. To make the long story short, the LM, now clean, had dumped the 55g drum of top off water through the kalk reactor and into my sump overflowing the sump. Now, this is where it gets fun. Read the following with a soft James Bond background kind of music. I asked him to look at my pH and salinity meters and tell me what it said. Before he said anything I said let me guess that it says 8.55 or so and the salinity meter says 1.022 or so instead of 8.22 and 1.025. He said yes, that is what it says. I told him to look at the tank and see if anything looks funny to him: Nope! I told him how to refill the top off container and how to reset the LM and I never heard from him for the next 8 days.
So, how did I know what it said?? Easy. I am not that smart, but I ask a lot of questions. Before I set up my previous tank, I did a very extensive search in RC about top off and kalk reactors. I found in a thread a link to a calculator that would tell you how much your salinity would change based on water addition and how much your alk and Ca (you can calculate pH from there) you change given a certain volume of kalk or 2 part solution. I plugged in the numbers for my set up volume and top off container size and that is what it came out to. So, when I set up the system I knew I couldn't kill it the way I was doing it even if the LM went crazy and disaster struck. I copied the same in this system and given the volume is twice as large I have 50% less to worry about. Now, in your case, it was a sudden addition of kalk and not over 2 days like my case, which explains why your case was so much worse.
Moral of the story is that automation only goes so far. In my case, I would value so much more my sitter with no skills or know-how and very detailed instructions over the technology that could replace him/her. If you are really interested and want to get a good laugh, email me and I'll tell you what exactly is it that I do and what instructions I leave my sitter so that they can't ever do anything but what I ask them. :lol: :lol: :lol:
What happened to you with your kalk disaster is the very same reason I ahve a litermeter for top off. Making the sytem automatic and hands off is a great concept, but a flawed one when there is dependency among the automatic parts. It makes the entire tank as solid as the weakest link. About 2 years ago before I went on vacation for 10 days to the Turks and Caicos, I spent the afternoon cleaning and topping everything off in my previous system to make sure I left the least amount of things to do for my sitter at the time, which was my neighbor. He was the male 35 y.o. version of my current sitter.
I completely overlooked the fact that I had gotten lazy over the months before and had not cleaned the rollers in my LM, so I took them out, cleaned them, and replaced them. Well, over the last few months I had been increasing the rate in the pump to compensate for the dirtier and dirtier rollers. I didn't set it back after I was done cleaning. Needless to say, 48 hours later I get an emergency call from my neighbor telling me that he got home and he sees water coming out of my garage. To make the long story short, the LM, now clean, had dumped the 55g drum of top off water through the kalk reactor and into my sump overflowing the sump. Now, this is where it gets fun. Read the following with a soft James Bond background kind of music. I asked him to look at my pH and salinity meters and tell me what it said. Before he said anything I said let me guess that it says 8.55 or so and the salinity meter says 1.022 or so instead of 8.22 and 1.025. He said yes, that is what it says. I told him to look at the tank and see if anything looks funny to him: Nope! I told him how to refill the top off container and how to reset the LM and I never heard from him for the next 8 days. So, how did I know what it said?? Easy. I am not that smart, but I ask a lot of questions. Before I set up my previous tank, I did a very extensive search in RC about top off and kalk reactors. I found in a thread a link to a calculator that would tell you how much your salinity would change based on water addition and how much your alk and Ca (you can calculate pH from there) you change given a certain volume of kalk or 2 part solution. I plugged in the numbers for my set up volume and top off container size and that is what it came out to. So, when I set up the system I knew I couldn't kill it the way I was doing it even if the LM went crazy and disaster struck. I copied the same in this system and given the volume is twice as large I have 50% less to worry about. Now, in your case, it was a sudden addition of kalk and not over 2 days like my case, which explains why your case was so much worse.
Moral of the story is that automation only goes so far. In my case, I would value so much more my sitter with no skills or know-how and very detailed instructions over the technology that could replace him/her. If you are really interested and want to get a good laugh, email me and I'll tell you what exactly is it that I do and what instructions I leave my sitter so that they can't ever do anything but what I ask them. :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Travis
SPS Obsessed
That was a pretty funny story.
I hear ya on the LM rollers. Those things need to be cleaned way more often than the instructions say. I don't remember how many hours it takes before the cleaning maintenance alert goes off but I always need to clean mine before that. The last time I cleaned them was after 4 months and the flow rate changed drastically. Just need to be sure and recalibrate after every cleaning.
I hear ya on the LM rollers. Those things need to be cleaned way more often than the instructions say. I don't remember how many hours it takes before the cleaning maintenance alert goes off but I always need to clean mine before that. The last time I cleaned them was after 4 months and the flow rate changed drastically. Just need to be sure and recalibrate after every cleaning.
Craig Manoukian
McKosker's Wrasse
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2003
- Messages
- 237
Vavavavoom! Alberto it really looks like the project is coming together nicely. A real comfortable look to the decor!
AcroSteve said:
Which are you refering to? I don't have a single thing that is suspended, held, or depends on a wire tie to stay in place. They are all for neatness and nothing else. Could you be more specific and poin them out?
In the pics showing the VHO improvements, the shelf standards that you are suspending the endcaps from look to be held together and connected to the galvinized unistrut with only wire ties.
Upon closer inspection, I do see you have the actual endcaps suspended by some coated wire, but I just cannot see the bolts that are holding the metal pieces together.
On a similar topic, you might consider some heat shrink for the crimp connections for long term success. It should keep most of the moisture out of the connections.
Upon closer inspection, I do see you have the actual endcaps suspended by some coated wire, but I just cannot see the bolts that are holding the metal pieces together.
On a similar topic, you might consider some heat shrink for the crimp connections for long term success. It should keep most of the moisture out of the connections.
zemuron114
Member
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2005
- Messages
- 13
nothing short of amazing! Keep up the good work! :razz:
dgasmd...
dgasmd, I just now found this thread... All I can say is WOW... Your setup is totally AWESOME... If you don't mind I would love to talk to you more about he 500g (92x48x28) tank that I am having Will (AO) build for me...
Shawn
dgasmd, I just now found this thread... All I can say is WOW... Your setup is totally AWESOME... If you don't mind I would love to talk to you more about he 500g (92x48x28) tank that I am having Will (AO) build for me...
Shawn
jimspirit
Member
Alberto, what is the salt water mixing tank made of?
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jimspirit
Member
I was thinking it might be made of viber glass. If it was, I would be comcerned about the vibers getting into the display tank.
kevinpo
Expert
It's a standard polyethylene tank.
Very nice Alberto! I really like the finish. Does it hold up well or does it scuff or chip? After 4.5 years I still don't have a cabinet
Humidity is always the big issue with larger tanks.
Regards,
Kevin
Very nice Alberto! I really like the finish. Does it hold up well or does it scuff or chip? After 4.5 years I still don't have a cabinet
Humidity is always the big issue with larger tanks.
Regards,
Kevin
