Blog Comments

Sorry for your loss. Fish are like dog's. you never part on a high note. it's not like they grow up, go to school, or something like that.

Sorry for you loss. I agree that you get more attached to marine fish than fresh. Not sure what it is but I love em.

awe my condolences. Its amazing how fast you recognize something is wrong with your tank. I always knew just before I really recognized that some specific fish was gone. Things wouldn't feel right.

Yeah, kinda like that. I think when it comes to fish death the thing that probably eats a me the most is you don't really if it was your doing or natural causes.

So I just shot some darts to practice for my match tomorrow night and I just found the fish getting scavenged but my hermits.

Sucks.

Sorry to hear that. Kind of like losing a dog huh?

Ive been keeping fish for over 20 years and for some reason the Marine fish tend to have become more like pets to me than any FW fish.

FYI - be sure to use plastic hose clamps on any tubing connections to avoid flooding the floor.

You can buy these online or at your LFS.

The noise is the pump itself, without any plumbing attached and being suspended in the water not touching anything it creates its buzzing noise. The only thing connected to it is a 3/4" vinyl tube for the sole return and its pretty clear of the sump bottom because it actually has for huge suction cup feet that work when they want to. But they give the pump a good 1/2" clearance from the sump bottom, and they are made of very soft rubber rather than the more unforgiving rubber you may find on like a heater.

The rates aren't tiered in my neck of the woods. But I did come across something on ConEd's site about reduced rates after like 10pm so I have to look into it. They never had it before. I hate the electric in the NYC are because its just ConEd, they offer escrow providers but ConEd is still killing you in service charges/fees and delivery charges/fees. No matter where you turn here they have their hand in your wallet, it's disgusting. KeySpan energy covers Brooklyn and they were cheaper than ConEd. Long Island I believe has cheaper energy and gas. We pay high prices for an infrastructure that's in some places crumbling.

What is the noise coming from specifically? The sound of water moving through it? The plumbing resonating? The vibration against the sump's base or wall? Maybe we can help you figure that out.

For others checking out the math:
124w x 24 hours a day x 30 days is 89.28 kWh x $0.33 is $29.46 per month.
Remember, 124 watts is 0.124 kilowatts, because you take 124/1000 to get that number. So, .124 x 24 x.33 = .9821 per day.

.063w x 24 hrs x 30 days is 45.36 kWh x .33 = $14.97 monthly.

Is your electricity tiered like it is in California? Their rates are .35 during the daytime, but drop to .05 from 6pm until morning. Your rates are really high. If I lived where you are, there's really no way I could keep my tank. I've had my share of high energy bills, but OMG it's high where you are. I just did a comparison. In the winter I tend to use about 2100 kWh for the month, and in the summer it is more like 3200 on average. That would be $693 to $1056 per month. In Texas, we have deregulation and a bunch of companies to choose from. I was getting hit hard by two different companies over the past few years, and switched to my current provider that locked me in for 12 months at .103/kWh.

Please tell me you didn't calculate it. But yeah $30, can you believe that. This new rio is supposed to be about 12 bucks month, but I am not thrilled with the noise. If I can find something else I would switch but at 62 watts and for the flow I need nothing is coming close.

Near $30 a month in electric for a single Mag 9 pump? Holy cow!!

If the pump only ran wild for 30 seconds, you had seven gallons of water to clean up. A plenty big mess any way you look at it.

Thanks Jess, it sucks but it was a dumb move on my part. I just finished redoing everything, plugs and what not, took out the ATScrubber so I am expecting to probably see algae creep up in the tank until the cheato can get going. Hopefully this new bulb I got works.

Wow that is a horrible story! (Although very well told ) Sorry that happened and I'm sure your kitties still love you.

The only problem with the bulb is that EcoSmart didn't put any warning on the packaging stating that your pods and fuge shrimp may require SPF 30 during the operation of this bulb.

Originally Posted by Snakebyt

looks great, dont you hate being under the iron thumb of an electric company

Oh yeah, without a doubt. I would love to own my home so that we can throw solar panels up and flip em off. Have them pay us for electricity.

looks great, dont you hate being under the iron thumb of an electric company

Well the real view change was the electric bill. That caused me to take a look at my equipment and do some research on the electrical impacts of the equipment and also try to determine what equipment was needed. A perfect example would be my return pump, its a mag9 that chews 93 watts that's feeding a SCWD water current device, it was a great idea at first but in looking back at it, its unnecessary since I don't need that much flow through my sump and the return isn't really creating much water movement. So that is going to be replaced on Tuesday with a Rio HyperFlow 12 with matches the amount of water flow through my sump and that's only 40 watts. After seeking GrimReefer on ReefCentral and asking his advice, the lighting will be provided with either an ATI sunpower or the new Tek that's coming out with the active cooling. The only problem is I am not sure if I am going to go the 36" or the 48" route on the fixture length. I was also killing my E-bill with the heater. I noticed it was on almost 24/7 so I dropped another heater in there to help bring the temp up and take the load off the one heater. I removed the skimmer because that was killing me at 40 watts thus spurring the natural nutrient export with an ATS but I am not digging the salt spray though minute, nor the cleaning the screen every other week. Also noticed that my amphipod population is not a numerous as it was when I had even 5 inch round ball of cheato. I don't have any mandarin fish, not sure if I will keep one but I think bio diversity is one of the top indicators of the health of the tank. I choose the Koralia Mag 5 pump because it only chews 8 watts of power and it will by far give me the flow that the tank has been badly missing. Plus they are electrical soft start motors which in theory should allow me to hook them up to a wavemaker like the jbj duo, alternate them every 30 seconds and not kill the pumps. As much as I would love to have the mp40, if I even mention equipment cost that's not reasonable, my wallet goes on protest and my girlfriend gives me that "look".

As for my freshwater tanks, the big change was again, providing the proper heater for the tank and swapping out filters for more power friendly items. I choose the AquaClear power filters because they eat 6 watts of power and the filter media is separate thus reducing my cost in replacement media and reducing the amount that goes into my garbage.

The 2nd pic is the Algae Turf Scrubber that is the basis of the nutrient export for the tank. The principle is that algae grows faster then macro algae such as cheato. Which in turn is supposed to equal faster nutrient export when maintained properly. When I first set it up it took about 3 maybe 4 weeks for the algae to grow on the screen, once it did, within 2 weeks hair and red slime algae were gone. I neglected the screen and the algae came right back about 3 weeks later. It was also pretty quite also but I noticed that my pod population is not as high as before so I am switching back to cheato coupled with ulva so that I can feed it to my tang every once in a while. The other nusaince for me is that setting up an ATS requires specific calculations in terms of flow rates and screen size. You also need at least two lights to power the algae because the screen is actually double sided. But again, my pod count is low and I would rather spend the extra wattage powering cheato then on this screen. I think the ATS works, I dig it, but it's not for me.

"Tank Squatters" - LOL

Did that energy audit change your view in some specific way? What alterations did you have to make?

Your 2nd picture looks interesting. I have never seen anything like that. Can you explain a little? Your other pics look great!