Technofile

The Nano is starting to look good. The cycle was crazy and destroyed everything but even the Algae is receding at last. The water is clear and bright, all dangerous readings are at zero so the tank is habitable. I am now starting to work on the elements that will eventually make this an awesome system. I have managed to get the pH up to 8.26 – I want it at 8.3. There is a small problem with the KH, it is at 6 and would be better between 7 and 11 – I want it at about 10.

In the past with my big tank, and up until now, the fresh water top up tank was a cheep bucket of some sort and always spoiled the look of the system. Not this time. My plan was always to build a small cube to stand next to the tank that would house the fresh water.

Fresh water for a salt water aquarium?
Yip, if you remember back to your high-school science days, when salt water evaporates, the salt is left behind and only fresh water is drawn off. With a marine tank, this is a problem. Water evaporates quickly from our tanks because of the temperatures we keep them at and all the circulation etc. Having water levels dropping on its own is bad enough. But with fresh water evaporating, your salt level is rising and you don’t want that. The marine inhabitants are very selectable to salt water (SG) fluctuations. Adding back salt water is really a bad idea. This will increase your salt levels very qickly.

The solution, is to add fresh water back into the tank. (No tap water is ever used with a marine tank. All water is filtered through an RO unit, but that is for another day).

On my system, I have an optical water sensor in the sump, this is set to the working level of the water (in the sump). If there is a slight drop in the tank water level, the computer will turn on a pump in the fresh water tank and top the tank up to the exact working level again.

I decided to build my top up tank out of perspex. Was actually not sure what else to use. Glass would not work as it is clear, and the with the fresh water having no chemicals in it whatsoever from the RO process, there would soon be a huge algae problem and it would just look ugly. Perspex, easy to cut and sometimes shape, easy to bond, and available in a ton of colours. My colour of choice to match my setup, black…

Cutting the Perspex is easy, I just used a Jixsaw at a medium speed and concentrated really hard to keep to the line. Were not the best edges, but I managed to work it that wherever there was an important joint, the edge was one that was a factory cut.

(By the way, quick tip, make sure you got safety goggles on when working with this stuff, the dust will kill your eyes.)

You can see I left the plastic covering on the material. This is to keep from getting scratched, and it is easy to draw and write on.

Above you can see the cube completed.

All corners are bonded together and then I ran a bead of silicone as you would a normal fish tank. (Being black, I did not have to do such a great job).

This was just before doing a water test to see if the whole thing will hold together, and thankfully it did.

Here it is in place on the left of my tank. Starting to look nice now.
(I really have to stop being lazy and taking cell phone pictures when I got a great camera about 4 steps behind me in the cupboard)

Next step is to work on the power cables and plug bars to neaten all that up.

There is a con to this I only found out when I put the top-up in place… the dog can see himself in the plastic but because it is black, it does not really look like him so there is a bit of a battle going on between Chewy and his reflection.

 

 

 

It had to happen and I have been saying for a while how could it not. I mean with the size and portability, how long will it be before our kids only take a Pad / Tablet / Slate to work (yes trying not to be iPad – Apple – bias). I mean why not walk through the classroom door and your homework is downloaded to the server for the teacher to grade (or it grades itself). Do all your class work on it and then on the way out, your homework is loaded to the device to be done at home.

Why kill trees ….. my little GREEN statement for the day (Coming from the guy that drove into work today in a car without a catalytic converter and a juice sucker).

Next week there is a big Apple event in NY, and a lot of ppl including myself thought it would be a new iPad announcement, but alas it is not. The invite apparently read “Join us for an education announcement in the Big Apple” which will be held at the Guggenheim Museum on January 19.

NY is the hot spot for textbook publishes so it makes sense to have the event there. According to an industry insider, the New York Times confirmed that Apple will in fact partner with textbook publishes to start down this road.

Mashables has some good points though, will cash strapped students fork out for digital books (even though in my experience the digital copy of the book is normally cheaper and no tress get killed (see another Green statement). Some study or another that is not mentioned say students actually prefer printed books, personally if it is a textbook I don’t prefer either printed or digital, they don’t have enough pictures for me (and yes I do mean of hot ladies in very little clothing).

Textbook giants McGraw-Hill and Pearson already have a stake in digital books and aligning itself with a giant like Apple and the massive market prescience that goes with it, could make digital textbooks soar. Apple’s Newstand App, increased the revenue of magazine publisher Conde Nast by more than 200%.

I have seen with my daughter with her iPad and yes she is addicted to it, but I have also seen how it has actually helped her education wise. She was seriously battling with Afrikaans last year and with the help of an iPad Flashcard App, she got her average from 50% to over 80% just because she likes the device so much, she was willing to use it.

Happy new year to all you great people. I hope it is a great and most importantly safe one for you all.

The Nano is still cycling in a big way. There is lots and lots of brown algae everywhere and most of everything in the tank has died or is dying. I was very sorry to see my Bristle Star go but it was better because as you watched him bits were falling off. In the end I put him down myself. There are a few mushrooms and zoos left but I am not sure how long they will last. I think in the long run, this is a brand new start.

I have been taking readings on a daily basis to see what the cycle is doing and thought I would just share some results with you.

This image shows the test I just did – left to right – for Ammonium (NH3-NH4), Nitrite (N02), and Nitrate (N03).

The interesting thing here is all 3 results should be almost clear when the tank is running normally. I have mentioned what the reasons for these results are in a previous post so will not do so again.

I have not been measuring the Nitrate as there is very little point until the other two start to come down but the result is crazy. The chart under the 3rd vile is the one for the Nitrate. You can see the purple dot that I am comparing to. The dot on the card is 100 mg/l – in a reef tank, this should be less than 1 mg/l. The N03 in my tank is way off the charts!

OUCH!

For interest sake, the Ammonia is reading at 3.0 mg/l where the ideal would be less than 0.01 mg/l and the Nitrite is reading at 2.0 mg/l where the ideal would be 0 mg/l.