Who's Into Saltwater?

[Tony]

Just went to put the powerhead in my barrel to mix some salt in the water I made a while back. I measured out 22 cups of salt, went over and grabbed the cleaned and ready powerhead, put it in the barrel, plugged it in and grabbed my phone to turn it on. Hit the on button... nothing. The controller comes on, but the pump is not spinning. Thought maybe I got some saltwater in the plug, cleaned it out, nice and shiny brass, plugged it in and turned it on... nothing. Checked another controller, same thing.

Pump is dead. It was pulled out of my aquarium working, cleaned and put up waiting for the barrel. And now.... it's a paperweight. That is the last time I will clean them with vinegar to get rid of the coralline algae. I don't know if that was actually the issue, but this is the first pump to die on me. Now, I don't have a pump to mix the salt water. Well, I do have others, that draw almost 250 watts.... Not going to happen. This sucks.

 

[Brick]

when you make your own RO/DI water. I read where you have 3x more disposable water than actual RO/DI water. does this sound correct ? How long would you say it takes you to make like 10 gallons ?

 

[Tony]

Yes, you will make about 3-4 gallons of waste water to every gallon of clean water. It is just the way the membrane works. I have a dual system (RO) so my waste is a little lower and my production is higher. In fact, I just moved my setup so I will post a picture of it below.

As for making 10 gallons, Depending on water temp, pressure and other factors like single or dual RO, it will take around about an hour to make that much. Maybe a little longer. It's definitely not fast, that is why most of us have storage tanks for water. Just let it keep filling when you don't need it and keep it on hand.

 

[Tony]

Here is my setup.

 

[Tony]

So keeping with the RO/DI setup, my pressure pump started leaking pretty good and I didn't know it because it was under the kitchen sink. Since the hoses are on the top, all of the water ran down into the motor and rusted it out pretty good in there.

I just finished taking it apart and completely cleaning it (no pictures, didn't figure anyone would want to see a rusty electric motor lol) and putting it back together and I'm running it on a stress test right now. I should have about 90 psi running through it at this time and I'm letting it go for a while to see if the motor or power supply gets hot or if the motor starts making noises.

Speaking of noises, I took the motor back apart and put a little Team Trinity bearing oil into all of the bearings and that stopped the squeak that I was hearing when it was under a heavy load.

We will see how things go in about an hour of pushing 90+ PSI of pressure, which this pump has never done lol.

 

[Tony]

So it turns out, I had the pump set to a MUCH higher pressure than I thought. I had it set to well over 120psi. How did I find this out? Well, I put the auto shutoff valve on backwards, and the entire system that is only meant for a max of about 90psi, shot way past what my 100psi gauge could read. Basically, the system you see above.... Became a ticking time bomb.

With that said though, they system did hold the pressure for the limited time it was there and I was able to see the issue and correct it. However, the auto shutoff valve was permanently damaged unfortunately. Thankfully I have a backup, but it likes to buzz when there is a change in pressure, so it's annoying. Will need to order a new shutoff valve.

So at this time, I'm going to just run without the booster pump and see how it goes.

 

[Brick]

We are on a well system. I kinda hate to run the pump that long. we still have the old above ground style pump, and it is a little old. (but works like a champ). the local fish store sells rodi water for 60 cent a gallon, and redsea saltwater for $1.25 gallon. I may just get a couple of 5 gallon water jugs to keep water on hand to get started. They are having an Aquatics Tradeshow tomorrow near us. suppose to have almost 100 vendors there. I'm pretty hyped . maybe I can Finally bring home a Cube !

 

[Tony]

I'm on a well as well. 340' well though lol. That is where your booster pump comes into play as well as your storage pressure tank. ro/di runs so slow that if your big well pump kicks on, it will be for a short time.

 

[Tony]

It's been a bit since I updated this thread. I figured since I'm digging deep into the site today, I would go ahead and give a small update. There really is not much.

So about a month ago, I made fresh water for the tank and had it mixed and circulating... Today, I FINALLY had time to do a water change and I changed 40 gallons of water in my 90 gallon tank. It has been way too long since my last water change so about a 35% to 40% (including sump) water change was definitely needed. That and this water has been sitting in a barrel circulating every hour for 5 minutes. So it needed to be used.

So got the water change done and I have made a determination. I'm going to see about doing a 15 gallon water change every week, maybe even a 10 gallon change. Just depends on if I forget to check the barrel while it's filling lol. The best option would be to have a dedicated barrel with freshwater in it only which the wife and I both can take out of (she has a cichlid tank) but with the current situation in the world today, I'm not going to find a barrel lol.

So for now, the water is changed and I need to clean the barrel out and get it ready for the next change. That's my update. I did a water change. Yay me lol.

 

[Tony]

So almost crashed the tank two days ago and could have severely damaged my house...

I woke up Wednesday morning and the ATO (Automatic Top Off) was low and my Apex on my tank sent me an email every hour on the hour. I got up to get ready for work that morning, and I put in a gallon of fresh water into the ATO. You see, when tank water evaporates, the salt does not evaporate, so you need to top off with fresh water to replenish what has evaporated.

The system I have has a float switch in the sump that will tell the system it needs to add more fresh water and will turn it off when the float closes. I also have a float in the ATO res as well, which is what triggered my emails.

Well, after putting in the gallon, which should have been good enough for a day or so, I get an email 30 minutes after I start work. So on my break, I put in two more gallons into the ATO. Everything was fine then. What I didn't know is that the wife put in an extra gallon when she got home, which allowed it to last until that night.

So Thursday morning, the wife wakes me up and says "the ATO overflowed". Yea, I pretty much jumped out of bed and ended up twisting my back. Getting old sucks.

I get out to the living room and the sump is about 6" over full. Every drop of water that we put in, plus some, was all in the sump.

A mixed reef tank needs to be at about 1.026 salinity which is what is suggested. I quickly grabbed my refractometer and checked the salinity and it was down to about 1.024. Not a huge jump, but enough that the corals were not looking great.

There are a few ways to correct this. I could mix up some saltwater and slowly trickle it in to slowly raise the salinity. I could also put salt directly into the sump, but I have to be very careful to not let the salt get into the main tank as it will burn the fish's gills.

The final option is to put salt water into the ATO and let the water evaporate naturally, which is what I did. I just siphoned some tank water into the ATO and as the sump gets low, it will top off with salt water, which will very slowly raise the salinity back to where it should be. This is the safest way to make the change happen.

So what happened? Well, I'm not 100% sure. The float switch that is in the sump somehow stuck in the down position telling the Apex that it needs to add water to the tank. This switch goes in and out of the water daily, and has been running great for years. I would say about 8 years now.

There are 3 main killers for a saltwater tank that will cause the tank to completely crash. I would say the first is a heater failure. Heaters have a switch inside them that can stick on, and when that happens, you cook your tank. The second is pump failure or a power failure. If the water isn't moving, then no oxygen is getting into the water, and everything suffocates. And the third, is ATO failures. Which is what happened to me.

Thankfully, my ATO res is only 4 gallons. I had thoughts of connecting my sump directly to my RO/DI system with a switch that is controlled directly from the Apex. If I had done this, the tank would be dead. Yes, it's a PITA to fill up this ATO ever few days, but in this case, it saved my tank.

This does have me wanting to upgrade my ATO system. Apex has a system called an ATK, which is an Automatic Top-off Kit. With this kit, there are two optical eyes and a manual shutoff valve. The lower eye will tell the system to turn on the ATO, the top eye will tell it to turn off, and if either of those fail (along with a timer that you can set for max time allowed), there is a float switch like what I use in my RO/DI system.

The issue with this is the system is $200.... That is quite expensive to simply add topoff water to a tank....

Guess I will make cleaning the mechanical float switch a priority every weekend to keep this from happening again. Definitely could have been much worse.

 

[D.O.G.]

Oh wow Tony. You got lucky this time. That diffidently would of been a major loss. I know you have a few dollars invested in that tank. Good catch! BTW, it does suck getting old. Wait til you break 50 yrs old.

 

[Tony]

Yea, just one of those things you have to check, and I failed to check it.

So, update time. I will be honest, I have done pretty much nothing with this tank since the last update. I know, sad... I just don't have the passion for it if I'm not building something for it... Kind of like RC. I have nothing to build, so I don't have fun. I like building more than flying.

So today I did a large water change because cyano algae was taking over again. Rather than the usual red, I have the blue/green, which actually looks black. It is (was) covering my sand and starting to come up the rocks. So it was time to do a major water change. With personal things going on in my life, I was unable to do a water change for quite a while. I have about 40 gallons of fresh water always on hand now so I decided to take that 40 gallons and just mix up salt water. Well, I put one of my big pumps in there and what I didn't know is it held the shut off down and kept it from actually turning off. I was on a stream and stated that I needed to check on my water, which I didn't really need to, I just wanted to make sure the hose was not about to fly out spraying water all over my house.

I went out to the kitchen, and the water was a little (lot) higher than it usually is. That is when I realized I never turned off the manual valve, and the hose was holding the automatic valve open.... So yea, I just went from 40 to 50 gallons of clean fresh water. This turned out to be a good thing, but could have been disastrous.

I also had another 20 gallons already mixed up, but it had been there for about 2 months. It was circulated for 10 minutes every hour of every day, but still, I didn't want to use it. And taking 50 gallons out of my main tank only leaves about 6" of water in there and I didn't want to remove anymore. The fish still need 'some' water lol.

So did the 50 gallon water change, severely pissed off the tang which jumped out of the water and slammed into the glass. I felt pretty bad.

Why did he jump, you ask? Well, I usually use a small maxi-jet 1200 and a smaller hose to pump water into the tank. I didn't want to do that. Above I stated that I had used one of my "big pumps" in the barrel, and yes, 900 gallons per hour, it will fill up the tank pretty quickly. I didn't know where the tang was, and thought he was in the back left corner behind the rock, so I shot the water in the back center... Guess where the Tang was... Yea, I pummeled him with water and bubbles! He came flying out of there!

Don't worry, he is fine and eating and swimming like usual.

I did take out the first 20 gallons of water and removed about 5lbs of sand and almost all of the algae (cyano). I will need to do it again in a week or so due to it coming back already in the sand. I just do NOT want to use that chemi-clean again. That stuff is horrible! But, the tank does look better.

Another first happened today... Back on April 16th, I setup my triple stage DI resin. I have a post on it here in this thread. Go back one page I believe. Well today, I had to finally change the Anion stage of the resin. It only had about an inch of good resin left, and I didn't want it to start taking out the mixed resin, which is the third stage. The first stage is Cation. The first and third stage are still at 100%! Even after completely depleting the Anion stage. However, the mixed stage 3 is dyed to only show the usage of the cation, and not the Anion. The blue mixed resin will show the Anion. Kind of thinking about putting that one on there as well. I do have another container, tubes and a resin bin for it.... Hm... lol

So yea, over a year and I had to spend about $11 on it... I will call that a success and I am definitely saving money on it! Money well spent. If I was only using one stage of Di, the blue mixed bed, I would have had to change that I would think about 2-4 times already at $12 per change. So $48 plus shipping and my time.... Definitely worth!

 

[Tony]

Oh wow, it's been over 9 months since an update to this thread has been posted.

Not much has went on, I have just fed the fish, and I have done a couple water changes. Yea... a "couple". Definitely not as many as I should have, however due to back issues, and lack of time, it's hard to get it done. Well, that changed today for a bit.

Last night out of nowhere, my male Clown Fish who I call everything except a fish.... didn't look that hot and he was tucked up under some algae on the sand bed. I moved the algae and his orange didn't look so hot. The wife looked at him and said there is something weird with his fins.

Well, today, his fins have gotten about 1000x worse and I'm not sure if he is being picked on, which I doubt, or if he is just old. He is one of the oldest fish in the tank so it may just be "his time". Of course Nitrates could have helped with this since that does burn their gills, however it doesn't affect their fins.

So today I did a 45 gallon water change and cleaned the tank up. I'm filling up the barrel again to do another 45 gallon water change next weekend and then I'm hoping I can do 20 gallon water changes each weekend after that, maybe 10 gallon, not sure yet. Depends on time.

But, unfortunately I may be losing my male clown, and the female may go soon after as they have been together for years. I just found the video of the two after I had to treat them for a disease back in 2012. So at least 9 years they have been in this tank.

But, I have been wanting a different pair of clown fish for a while now, something more unique, and I want more coral, so I need to get this tank back in shape. I may even think about buying or building a new sump as mine is pretty much on it's last leg. And I have some ideas of how I want to design my next one.

 

[Tony]

So as posted in the above post, I did that 45 gallon water change, then I did another 45 gallon water change the following weekend, and then I did a 20 gallon water change the weekend after that. What I have decided is I did the two 45 gallon changes, I'm going to do 4 20 gallon water changes, and then I will just keep up with the water changes by doing 10 gallon water changes a week (about 10%). This should keep the water where it needs to be.

The little s**thead male clown is doing much better and just as aggressive as ever. I call him every name in the book because if you put your hand in the tank, he will (WILL) attack you. Now, his mouth is so small that it's only a small pinch (less than the doctors say is a "small pinch"), but that is not the part that sucks. It's when he does it, your instinct is to flinch and when you do, you splash water everywhere, or those like me with a canopy, you slam your elbow onto the canopy! And that part DOES hurt lol. So, now you know why I call him everything but a fish lol.

But, all fish are doing great, of which, I do not have that many left. I have my Yellow Tang, the two clown fish, a single very aggressive (towards his kind) Bangi Cardinal and a 6 line Wrasse. They are just as happy as they can be in the tank.

The coral that I have left is obviously the massive amount of Hammer Coral that lives in spite of me, the Green Star Polyps (GSP) I have 3 different Acan corals that were about dead, but are coming back and I think I have a few eyes left on the Chalice coral that I had at the back of my tank, but I'm not sure. I also have the Firework Clove Polyps still as well, although they are quite small. I had then in the wrong part of the tank and they didn't like it. And I have some small patches of Montipora left in there. This is the red kind, but it is also supposed to have some green, although I have never seen it.

My Leptastria is gone which sucks. Oh, and I have some Zoanthids.

I have talked to the wife, and we have decided to start doing some more with the tank. The first thing was to get the water parameters back in check. I purchased the Red Sea test kits, and the Alkalinity test is HORRIBLE. Almost clear water, and I was getting a reading of about 6.5dKH, which is low, it needs to be 8-12dKH. So I talked to the wife, and she gave the approval to get new test kits. And only one came to mind, Hanna.

Now, if Matt comes in here, he will yell at me, but I went and purchased the Alk kit, the Calcium kit (more on this in a bit), the Phosphate kit and the Nitrate Low Range kit (more on this one in a bit as well).

So remember, with RedSea, I received a reading for dKH of 6.5. I did the SUPER SIMPLE test on the Hanna and it was 8.6. I tested again, and same reading. I'm going to trust the Hanna. If I had trusted the RedSea kit, I would have over dosed Soda Ash, and my Alk would have been around 13 I'm thinking (trying to raise to 10, maybe just 9.5). Along with these testers, I also purchased Calcium, Alkalinity and Magnesium to dose the tank. I checked my Mag with the Red Sea kit, and I'm showing 1600, which I do not think is accurate, but Hanna doesn't make a Mag tester for saltwater. Suckage.

I have since dosed the tank with soda ash twice to bring up my levels. The 8.6 reading jumped to 8.9 on the first dose of about 50ml. I then dosed another 45-50ml and I have not checked it yet after that second dose.

My calcium was reading about 450-460 with the RedSea, and Hanna gave 469. NOW.... Here is where Matt may come in... The Calcium Hanna checker is VERY finicky. You have to do everything PERFECTLY to get a good reading. You have to have 100% pure clean water. You have to put the vial in at the exact same angle every time, you have to make sure there are no finger prints on the vial, you have to make sure there are no bubbles in the vial (you do have to shake this vigorously to integrate the reagent). and I don't think it is required, but I leave the tester in the exact same spot on my desk/table for each test just in case ambient light can affect the reading.

This calcium test kit requires 1ml of liquid reagent, and then 9ml of pure water (distilled is best, I use RO/DI). With that mixture, you then put it in the checker and hit the button on C1. This is to zero the tester. Then, you put in 1µl (micro liter) for which they provide a calibrated syringe (I think lol) of salt water. Yes, 10ml vial, and only 1µl of saltwater. Talk about sensitive. Then you put in your powder reagent, shake for 15 seconds, then wait 15 seconds for the bubbles to go away, then place in the checker on C2 and test.

It is actually much faster than it sounds, but is kind of a pain. I have yet to do back to back checks, which I will do today when I test my water after the water change.

I have not tested my phosphates, so nothing to report on there as of yet.

Now onto the Nitrate Hanna Checker. I am not sh**ting you, the DAY I received my LR (Low Range) Nitrate checker, they released the HR (High Range (more on this in a bit)). Yea, I was a little pissed off, but that is because I was not as pissed as I was when I saw it on the website... For the LR Nitrate test, you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to test this stuff. And for me, I have about 15 Nitrate (high, I know, working on it...) and this LR checker only goes up to 2.5. So, I have to dilute my sample by 10x, and then multiply the reading by 10.

But, to test this LR stuff, you have to put in a reagent that causes particles in the water, then you have to filter this sample and then you can test after filtering. I was not looking forward to this as API makes a super simple 5 minute test for Nitrate, but it was on sale (now I know why.... ugh) and I thought why not. Well, I may never use this one...

The HR Nitrate Hanna Checker, you put in salt water, add one packet of reagent, shake and measure. Yea... that simple... Mine is showing delivery today, but is still in OKC, so should be here Monday. Still a little pissed about this lol.

I will give you an update on the Phosphate when I do that test, and I will also let you guys know about the HR Nitrate, and what the back to back tests of the Calcium results are.

The testing will be done later today, or maybe even Monday after work when I have the HR NO2 checker.

Today, like I posted above, I'm doing the 20 gallon water change and I'm printing new outflow nozzles for the tank return water (back into the tank from the sump). I have no idea where mine went that I printed a while back. But, he updated the files and made them longer, and longer is always better (right ladies lol). So those are on the 3D printer being made as I type this.

Now, lets talk about the sump... As I have posted before, my sump needs major repairs, or just replaced. And the wife and I have decided on replacing it with a prebuilt sump. And this is going to get EXPENSIVE.

My current sump is made with 3/16" (0.1875" or 4.7625mm) extruded acrylic. Not the best stuff to make a tank out of (pretty much what a sump is). Mine has all kinds of cracks, and one was leaking, but I was able to stop that leak a year or so ago. Now, there are new cracks that are VERY close to going all the way through. I'm thinking about draining the return area and placing a piece of acrylic in this area and welding it on just so that IF it goes all the way through, it will not leak. But, not really looking forward to that.

Another thing, I love filter socks in how they catch and filter all the crap out of the water. My issue is, you need to pull them out and replace about every 3 days at most. Yea, I don't do that. So we are thinking about going with a roller filter system. And Trigger released one with their sumps in their "Platinum" line.

I like the features of this sump, I like the filter, I like the dosing lines and I like the location of the probe holder. And the fact that you can adjust the size of the skimmer chamber to make the refugium later is a huge plus. So, I think we are going to go with the 34" Trigger Platinum series sump. And the reason I'm going with the 34 and not the 39 (my sump is 40" long) is because the 39 is 16" front to back, and I only have 15" to work with, hence why I made my own sump from their sump design (I really like their designs!).

I did think about making my own sump again with everything I want, but in all honesty, I do not need a 40" sump. And going down to a 34" sump, it will provide room to put dosing containers in there. Future plans that i have not decided on yet.

So, that is where we are at this time. I need to get motivated to do this water change, and do some cleaning (oh and I cleaned the return pump and skimmer body and pump last weekend). I do need to remove my ATO res from the sump area and clean that pump. It's running a little slow, so I will get that worked out today as well. Now if only my outflow nozzles will finish printing!

 

[Tony]

Okay, I have to give credit where credit is due. A long time ago (I think 2016 or so), I printed out some Random Flow Generators for my tank. These are outflow nozzles that, with the jet of water, increase the volume of water going through with the intake ducts, then swirl it around where it randomly shoots water out of the end. You can see images of this in the link below. The link below is of the new design that I just printed today.

Turbulent Flow Nozzle 2021 Model Line by Cleven

Always welcome to request the latest versions via pm. Files attached here were designed in 2015/16, released 2021. Later models and more efficient designs exist. Msg me for latest stlshttps://www.instagram.com/k.cleven/ The Original Random Turbulent Flow Nozzle Generator. For 1/2in PVC, 3/4 PVC...

www.thingiverse.com

The first ones that I printed, I have no idea where I put them. They are kind of a pain to clean, but IMO, they are worth it. In the link above, there is a picture on the left side of the ones that I printed first. Today, I printed the new ones, which are longer, and work better!

It took about 5.5 hours to print two of them, and as soon as I put them on my tank, I could see water hitting the surface, then the surface going still, then water hitting the surface, then still. I never got this, this well, with the old design.

Now, because of asshats, he did have to put a branding on the new ones, but IMO, it's perfectly fine since people likely got rich on ebay with this design. And I do feel that he designed these back in 2015. So I'm happy to print these out with the logos and text.

I have a 3/4" Loc Line that goes into a 2 way splitter with 2 1/2" outputs. The last time I printed these, I had to print at 101% as 100% was just too tight, and it cracked. So this time, I decided to print at 101% for the first print. I also used the "Tree Support" in Cura, and am I glad I did. I started a print for 3/4" with regular supports, and they just fell away and the print would have failed if I didn't realize I had 1/2" as I had measured the single output.

So on the new print, I chose the tree support and hit print. It completed and they snapped right on and is tight enough to stay in place. And it has a better grasp than the last design.

So if you have an aquarium, give these a shot. The dude has an amazing design that works wonderfully!

 

[Tony]

Today it water change day. 20 gallons. I should have done it yesterday, but ended up doing some other things and my back just wasn't in the mood to huff the barrels. So I'm going to do it today, here in just a few minutes. I may also do another little modification that I have been wanting to do for oh.... almost 9 years.... lol. But we will see about that after the water change.

 

[Tony]

Okay, I just did a full suite of water testing after the 20 gallon water change. And I'm not so sure about these results... Not all of them anyway.

The 20 gallon water change went off like a normal water change. Took more sand out of the tank as I'm no longer wanting a deep sand bed, and slowly working it down.

On the testing, I have the following:

Calcium	477PPM
Alkalinity	8.9dKH
Magnesium	~1700
Nitrate	1.25
Phosphate	0.00

Calcium, okay, I believe that one.

Alkalinity, I can believe that one as well.

Magnesium though, I do not believe that one as I have not dosed and my salt water solution that I mix should be around 1350. Will need to get a new kit.

Nitrate, I have one test kit (Red Sea) that stated I had about 15ppm, and so I tested this with the Hanna Checker, in the High range, and it was 0.00 (diluted sample that you have to multiply by 10. So I did a second test (which is a major PITA BTW) and did it full strength, and it came out at 1.25. I have another Nitrate checker that will be here tomorrow. I will retest to see if it is the same and will post the results.

And Phosphate. I tested this previously with the RedSea kit, and it read 0.00. I thought it was a bad test kit, but the Hanna Checker is staying the same thing... Guess it's time to start dosing.

If you read these, the levels are amazing except for magnesium, which is a little high. I will no longer be doing the 20 gallon water changes as everything seems back to normal. So from now on I will be doing 10 gallon water changes a week, or maybe even bi-weekly, depending on what the calcium and alkalinity are doing. If I see those dropping pretty quickly, then I know the corals are feeding a lot more, and they will need the trace elements that are in the salt.

So the tank is back on track, now I just need to maintain it. Let's see how that goes...

 

[D.O.G.]

I imagine that tank is like everything else. As long as you take care of it and maintain it, it should last you without trouble. Yeah, there's trouble in everything anyway

 

[Tony]

Yep, you are correct about that one. I have had this tank for quite a while now (all documented in this thread) and there have been horrible lows, and some pretty good high's. I'm just hoping to have something that we like to look at after neglecting it for a while.

 

[Tony]

Oh, and Mr. Matt just told me something that has me happy, sad and worried at the same time... But I will leave that story for another day...