VulcanRider

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

"Tank Squatters" - LOL

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

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.

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.

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

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.