Cali Kid Corals

Rygh's 250 gallon upgrade

Well, I did some experimentation yesterday and today.
Plus I got an interesting idea at the meeting from Dave.

I experimented by hand, first pushing the water back and forth with a pan,
then today pushing the water up and down with a pot.
I tried it both in the main 240G tank, and a smaller empty 25G tub.

Results:

1) The oscillation period is a lot shorter than I thought. It is only about 1 second.
Pretty quick.
Unfortunately, the whole valve/pipe/surge thing will definitely not work at that frequency.
With the valves opening, and the long pipes, there is just no way.
So while that idea might be cool for a silent-surge, it is out as far as a wave maker.

2) It is noisy.
As the wave oscillates, it pushed a ton of water over the overflows in pulses.
Those pulses cause a big waterfall, and make a lot of noise.
I do think that is fixable with a ramp in the overflow, but still something to consider.

3) Displacement seems to work better than pushing water.
Basically, pushing a container up and down seems better than a pump.
But it was also much easier to match the wave pushing up and down,
since you can feel the return wave. So a bit hard to say for sure.

4) It takes a lot of energy in the real tank.
In the small tub, it was almost effortless. A small repeating push
at the right frequency, and I had a huge wave, and it lasted 15+ seconds
after I stopped.
In the real tank, it took a lot of work, and I was lucky to see 2 waves after I stopped.
My guess is that the rock work really slows down the water and the other power
heads tend to disrupt the wave.

Hmmm.
 
So from Dave's idea on using a plunger for wave generation, this is what I came up with.
No moving parts in the water. No pumps or motors in the living room.

surge_dev_3.jpg
 
Quick summary:
The objective is both to improve flow, especially at sand level, and to reduce
the maintenance required by current numerous power-heads.

Key options I am still considering:
(Note that all of these still will require a couple of large power-heads for main circulation)

1) Tunze 6215 wavebox
Somewhat expensive. Slight issue with large-ish box in the tank. Overflow noise.
And it is still a power-head, which I was trying to eliminate.

2) DIY Wave machine with external motor.
Fun! But a fair bit of work. Overflow noise.

3) Larger return pump with eductor-nozzles and sea-swirls.
The reason for many of the small powerheads was to hit those spots behind rocks, etc.
A larger pump with lots of small nozzles could do the same thing.
Some electricity cost issues, but not all that different.

Or combinations.

Hmmmmm.......
 
Placement will be very important in your setup. Way more water than obstruction doesn't hurt either :bigsmile:
What happens if you turn off the other powerheads and try again? They may become more supplemental in this case.
 
houser said:
... What happens if you turn off the other powerheads and try again? ....
Click to expand...

A good idea. I did.
It was WAY easier to set up an oscillating wave. And it lasted for 5-8 pulses before dying out.
The bad news - it exposed another issue.
I have a lip in the tank, that attaches the stainless steel rim. Even moderate sized waves
hit and splash. Splashes into the tank, not out, but still not a good situation.
So that seriously limits wave height.

SO : While cool, with that, plus the overflow noise issue, I think the wave maker ideas are out.
Bummer.
 
Well, looks like simply switching to fewer+larger power-heads might be better.

I could go with 4 x controllable Korallia-7, one at each corner. Plus 4 way controller.

Then any dead spots could be handled by nozzles/sea-swirls from returns.

Boring....
:)
 
It was rather funny:
I went on the sea-swirl site to look at the sea-sweep specs a bit.
Nice video - of a suspiciously familiar looking tank.
:)
 
Bad couple of days : Looks like brown jelly disease on my torch and maybe more!
:Sp

I lost at least 4 heads of a nice torch coral, and might be losing more.
Also another big LPS chalice seems to have some brown spots.
Hammer and other torches seems to be fine though.

I chopped off the brown-slimed heads of the torch, and dipped the rest in iodine and revive.
I split the remaining 3 heads, and put them in different parts of the aquarium. Hope some survive.
Added carbon, did a water change. Fed the other corals a bit extra.
Checked all parameters. CA is strangely higher than usual, phosphate could be lower, but otherwise water was good.
(Salinity = 1.026. CA=520, DKH=9.5, MG=1350, NO3=0, PO4=.045)

My main suspect is myself of course.
1) Flow problems due to power-head issues.
Fix is on order. But I notice some cyano in one spot as well, so definitely needs fixing.
2) I have been removing a concrete/rubble live rock construction that has been disintegrating,
and a fair bit of concrete particles dropped directly on that torch coral. Ouch!
Plus it disturbed the sand bed a lot.
I tried to clean the torch, but I think I likely hurt and weakened it badly.

I think the high calcium level and concrete might be related.
 
Kensington Reefer said:
Break off healthy remaining heads and toss the rest...sucks!
A couple of 3 day apart 30% water changes
Keep on keepin on
Click to expand...

Hmm, another thing on my to-do list : larger salt water mixing tank.
I can only do 10% water changes. (35 gallon mixing tank)
Usually plenty, but guess I need to prepare for emergencies better.
 
Another coral seems to be pretty much toast.
Seems to have the same brown-jelly on it. It was originally right down-flow from the torch.
Took about 3 days to get to this.
I fragged what seemed healthy, and it is in the high QT tank.
One of the torch heads recovered completely. All the rest seem to be toast.
Other softies all seem fine. One other LPS had some, but seems to be recovering.

dead_coral1.jpg


dead_coral2.jpg


torch_recover.jpg
 
For the stunner your only hope is emergency fragging. leave a good margin of heatly tissue and dip in revive. Also, keep a separate frag of everything!
 
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