Neptune Aquatics

"Giant Mini Fridge" - Red Sea E-170

Great idea. I’ve been thinking about doing his, really helps to see exactly how you did it.


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I finally got around to mounting my fresh air pipe to the wall. It's been raining off and on and it seems to be working as designed. :)

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I also hooked up my old BRS 1.1ml doser (actually 2ml) until I decide on a final dosing setup.

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My only concern with this mounting point is what happens when my return pump turns off and the sump fills. Will it cause precipitation? Does anyone have a better idea for dosing line location in the Redsea sumps?

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Could you mount the tube holder on an external/higher wall? You definitely don’t want the water level to ever get up to the tubes.
 
I tested it and the water level just barely touched the tip of the dosing line. I could have made an adjustment, but opted to relocate instead.

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I'm thinking of finally biting the bullet and buying a DOS. Anyone have one for sale? :)
 
I like that new position higher up.

Make sure the alkalinity line doesn’t drip against the side, it makes a crusty mess.

DOS is great, people don’t sell them very often :)
 
This is probably a stupid question, but I rarely see a single alkalinity dosing container and doser without seeing the calcium one nearby. Is that why you want a dos, so you can dose the calcium part as well?

I’ve got two dos units that I’m currently not using. But I’m afraid that the moment I sell one I’ll find a use for it.


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This is probably a stupid question, but I rarely see a single alkalinity dosing container and doser without seeing the calcium one nearby. Is that why you want a dos, so you can dose the calcium part as well?

I’ve got two dos units that I’m currently not using. But I’m afraid that the moment I sell one I’ll find a use for it.


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Yeah, I used to only dose kalkwasser on my old tank so a single headed BRS doser was good enough. Since switching to 2 part, I've been manually dosing. I figured I'd manually dose calcium during the day and auto dose Alkalinity at night until I buy a multi-head doser.

As for your unused DOS, you know what they say, if you love something, set it free (I forget the rest ;) )
 
I ended up finding a great deal on a used DOS. Having a few loyalty points saved up at an online reef gear retailer, I also picked up a 1Link cable to power/data the DOS directly form my EB832. I have it mounted in place of the BRS doser and everything fits better than I could have hoped. :D

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I also came across these great little container at my local grocery store. Since my fish load is still relatively small, I'm still only feeding about 1/2 of a frozen mysis shrimp cube. In these containers I can defrost a cube, feed half and store the rest in the refrigerator for the next day.

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Last, but not least, I picked up this crown conch. It's much bigger and more active than my other conch and can crawl up the glass and rock work. So far, it's doing a great job turning over my sand bed.

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It's been a busy month. I've been preoccupied with my other money pit of a hobby, 3D printing. I finally decided to try my hand at 3D modeling. After some reading and having no experience, I found the Fusion 360 was a good place to start. There are tons of tutorials online to guide you through almost anything you can think of. And what did I think of first? My own filter floss cup. :)

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If you are familiar with 3D printing, you know that even a small calibration cube can take ~20min to print, so I decided I would kill 2 birds with 1 stone and create a shallow cup that would hold just the right amount of filter floss and take less time to print. It took a little trial and error, but I got my first print in "natural" PLA (yes, not great for saltwater, but this are short term test prints).

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It sits just below the water to reduce any water fall noise.

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Even though that test print worked well, I had a nozzle obstruction issue that caused some minor under extrusion so I reprinted it in silver/grey PLA. This time remembering to take more pictures before putting it in the tank.

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Here, you can see a small taper I added to the inner diameter at the top edge of the cup to encourage water to hug the wall and flow smoothly and evenly around the entire radius.

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Used ~1-in wide strip of filter floss to coil inside of the cup.

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Perfect fit in the Red Sea filter drawer.

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I had a lot of fun with this project. I'm still looking into ways to improve the design and will post updated STL's on my thingiverse page: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2905077

OH, and not to leave out the latest addition to my tank.

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He/She (?) has been happily grazing on pods for about 3 weeks now! Honesty one of my favorite fish.
 
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I recently picked up a Skimz MBR127 algae reactor. Out of the box it runs a Skimz Quietpro 1.2 DC pump.

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I wanted to see what it would take to run this reactor from my manifold and started to take things apart.

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Based on the size of the pump hole a 1/2-in close nipple and 90 degree female thread to 1/2-in barbed adapter (found both in Home Depot sprinkler section) seems to fit nicely.

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Add a 1/2-in flexable elbow from my old TLF phosban reactor and we are ready to plumb.

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Now I'm just waiting for my "clean" cheato from aglea barn to fire it up.

How are you liking the MOD to the MBR127? Looks like a really cool idea. The pump on my MBR157 is the loudest piece of equipment in my setup, so removing the pump and adding it to the manifold would be great.
 
How are you liking the MOD to the MBR127? Looks like a really cool idea. The pump on my MBR157 is the loudest piece of equipment in my setup, so removing the pump and adding it to the manifold would be great.

The plumbing mod is working great. I'm just having a hell of a time keeping my chaeto alive. I seeded the reactor with algae barn clean chaeto, but it seemed brittle at the time. Not sure if it's the light or just a "bad" batch of chaeto. I'm thinking of scrubbing out the reactor and starting from scratch.
 
If my MBR157 works out, I would totally plumb it, unfortunately I'm having chaeto growing issues also. Thanks for information.
 
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