BobinCovington's new system "makeover"with sump stand, elos tank and...

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This is the panel that will mount to the center section of the sump workbench in the garage. The thin panel mounts to the side and has 8 receptacles (1 for each circuit). This panel will be on it's own dedicated 30Amp circuit of my home breaker panel.

Main Pump
Skimmer
Heater Controller
Dosing pump (profilux)
Auto top off (osmolator)
Saltwater Mixing (powerhead and heater)
Water Change Add and Drain (this breaker arms a sub panel with two on-off switches for water changes - 1 pumps water out of the sump to the drain and the other adds salt water to the sump from saltwater mixing reservoir)
aux (goes to an outlet strip for any other items)

The square unit on the panel is a heater controller which displays the set value and the process (actual) temp. Also has alarms and lets me know if the heater burns out. I think it will be much more reliable than a typical digital display heater. As a backup I have the reefkeeper temp display

The rocker switch on the bottom right is to control a bilge pump in the secondary containment under the sump. Any spills or water from rinsing equipment are quickly pumped out to drain.

The osmolator display will mount to the open area on the panel.

This way the living room just has the aquarium running with the reefkeeper for lights and powerheads and no noise. All the real life support is in the garage. (plus I get to have all kinds of switches and lights to play with)
 

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just a couple more...one is the Profilux programmable 3 channel (upgradeable to 4) dosing pump from Cherry Corals. I can't wait to get this baby hooked up and running.

and the skimmer from Warner Marine is chugging along with no problems. It just keeps working. Every other skimmer I have owned needed "supervision". So far this one is great, doesnt need babysitting, is an excellent build quality and just runs and skims a lot...can't ask for more than that. :) (sorry the picture is not so good, but the skimmer cup is about 3/4 full of light skimmate)
 
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BobinCovington said:
just a couple more...one is the Profilux programmable 3 channel (upgradeable to 4) dosing pump from Cherry Corals. I can't wait to get this baby hooked up and running.

and the skimmer from Warner Marine is chugging along with no problems. It just keeps working. Every other skimmer I have owned needed "supervision". So far this one is great, doesnt need babysitting, is an excellent build quality and just runs and skims a lot...can't ask for more than that. :) (sorry the picture is not so good, but the skimmer cup is about 3/4 full of light skimmate)
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Tank looks great! It's just hard to believe you got a canopy: over the tank. :)
 
I think I mentioned before...we just have the canopy as the lighting solution for now. We also didn't want light flooding our living room. So we can easily change out the lighting to a suspended canopy whenever we want. But for now we love it!
 
BobinCovington said:
I think I mentioned before...we just have the canopy as the lighting solution for now. We also didn't want light flooding our living room. So we can easily change out the lighting to a suspended canopy whenever we want. But for now we love it!
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I agree with the way your house is set up the light would make watching your tv awkward from the couch. Looks good Bob.

Don
 
Bob, looks good; but I think you need a few more electrical toys.. :) with 30 amps to blow you might as well see how close you can get..!
 
Holly smokes! I love this set up! 10! 10! 9!(dam) 10! 10! brb, gonna whip that disgruntled judge into shape! There 10!
 
Last night after the lights went out I was sitting in the dark and staring at my tank(sound familiar?). I have added some coral frags, some snails and cleanup crew but had lost my first fish (a little cherub angel just disappeared one night) One day I saw he had a little cut on his side and then he was gone the next night. I looked everywhere but could not find him.

I was looking at all the little copepods and things moving in the dark when all of the sudden I saw something big move in the crevices of the rock. So I watched a little more and sure enough, I have another rock crab! I already caught one but this one looks to be about an inch and a half or maybe even two inches across, with big claws.

So I guess I need to start the baited, pint beer glass routine every night to try and catch him. I wonder if he is the one who murdered my cherub.
A couple of pictures of the tank (and the beer glass) The name on the beer glass is for the crab's benefit.

update on the electrical...I am still working on the panel. Wires need to be made up for every circuit and every component, but it should be worth it when it is finally installed.

Hopefully I will post soon with a crab in a beer glass (and a functioning electrical panel)
 
SUSPECT BUSTED!!!

My wife came down to make some coffee this morning and came back up and said "we caught the crab!" and sure enough, there he was stuck in the beer glass. I reached in and slowly lifted the glass out of the tank being careful not to let the perpetrator escape.

Man, that beer glass trick really works (Cy at Barrier gave me the tip). So I set him on the counter in the glass and looked at him with the flashlight and took a few pictures.

After interrogating him under the bright light, he finally broke down and confessed to the murder of my Cherub angle, a few snails, a small hermit and also a misdemeanor of picking off my coraline algae.

So after a fair trial of his peers...the clownfish, coral frags and the remaining crabs and snails all unanimously voted him off the island. So the guilty crab was sentenced to death by toilet. He was blindfolded and as we all pulled the lever, a sense of satisfaction and closure came over us. The clowns have calmed down and there is peace once again.
 
New pics showing several frags and things are beginning to look like a reef.

I added a vortech MP20 and kept my Tunze, so the current flow has really improved. The vortech is on "reefcrest" mode from right to left and the Tunze points at an angle to the front glass, making a clockwise current and surging from the Vortech. The pump return locline from the sump points toward the surface to give some gas exchange.
 

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BobinCovington said:
New pics showing several frags and things are beginning to look like a reef.

I added a vortech MP20 and kept my Tunze, so the current flow has really improved. The vortech is on "reefcrest" mode from right to left and the Tunze points at an angle to the front glass, making a clockwise current and surging from the Vortech. The pump return locline from the sump points toward the surface to give some gas exchange.
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yup, starting to look like a really nice reef!
 
Sorry for the lack of posts, we have just had everything imaginable happening these last three months in our personal lives.

I just changed out lighting to a reeflux 10K (250w) and two T5 39W Geissman Actinic Pluses, so it looks much brighter and the corals seem to be coloring up even better.

Here are some recent pictures, including one of the electrical panel that is now up and running after reworking some wiring on the heater controller. (Thank you Adam for your help).

Also skimmer update for Jon Warner...the AS150 is working great! The darn thing just keeps pulling dark stinky stuff out of the water, so thank you for such a great product.

What's left?? Clean up the garage and the work bench, install the dosing pump, and water change switches. And then I will get to my list of "little nuisance" items to work on.
 
So just to show where I am at with this. Imagine how this will look when all the stuff laying all over is put away, the wiring is re-routed to the now functional electrical panel, and I have a garage sale. (oh and I just had to replace our house hot water heater in the garage, so even more was stacked on my sump bench to make room to work on that)

Don't look at the current state of affairs...Visualize the future right...
 
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