Jimbo’s CDA 250

[drexel]

Yeah, that sucks! I really wish that someone would make a simple auto alk tester that doesn’t suck for less than $400. Hopefully someone will chime in, if not, jump on the Neptune forum or humblefish?


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[Coloredrock]

Yeah, that sucks! I really wish that someone would make a simple auto alk tester that doesn’t suck for less than $400. Hopefully someone will chime in, if not, jump on the Neptune forum or humblefish?


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To DIY is like $245.. not including programing and assembly One of these days I want to try and build one.


https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-alkalinity-monitor.935180/post-10609784

Approximate cost breakdown is as follows:
- Dosing heads, £7 each = £21
- Stepper Motors, £7 each = £21
- TMC 2209 drivers, £7 each = £21
- 12v FAN, £6 each = £12
- DF Robot PH board, £32
- PCB Fabrication, £5
-PH probe, £32
- Mega 2560 Mini (from China) - £7
- ESP32 £7
- Acrylic £15
- RTC £5
- Other small bits and blobs £22

Total: £200

 

[Jimbo327]

The Test A (Alkalinity) has no issues. It is this Test B (CA/MG) that is not working. I may replace the reagents with a new batch as the final attempt, but I would be throwing away a lot of good reagent. It would be great if I can disassemble it and play with it if I had more time. I just don't have enough time to troubleshoot this Trident anymore. I have a lot on my plate at work and already a long list of tasks/equipment needed to setup for the tank. The whole point of the Trident was to make my life easier and save some time to work on other things.

 

[Jimbo327]

My sand is completely covered in brown stuff and it’s got a nice clean border all the way around. Weird, right?

I’m starting to think this is not diatoms, but it is bacteria from overdosing vinegar. I’ve stopped the vinegar dosing.

 

[Jimbo327]

I hooked up the external chamber, and feeding the chamber with water (from the sump) using a Minijet 606 pump. I also have a Tunze Nanostream powerhead in the chamber for circulation. I'm recycling all of my old nano tank equipment since I already have it.

Most people will use this chamber as a refugium and grow chaeto to reduce nitrate. Right now, my nitrates are low, so I don't need to bring it online...but at least it is set up and ready to go.

Note: Chamber is 18" x 8" x 20" (HxWxL) ~13 gallons volume and the Minijet 606 can fill at 153 gal/hr.

 

[Jimbo327]

To DIY is like $245.. not including programing and assembly One of these days I want to try and build one.


https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/diy-alkalinity-monitor.935180/post-10609784

Approximate cost breakdown is as follows:
- Dosing heads, £7 each = £21
- Stepper Motors, £7 each = £21
- TMC 2209 drivers, £7 each = £21
- 12v FAN, £6 each = £12
- DF Robot PH board, £32
- PCB Fabrication, £5
-PH probe, £32
- Mega 2560 Mini (from China) - £7
- ESP32 £7
- Acrylic £15
- RTC £5
- Other small bits and blobs £22

Total: £200

The way to go is to get these APEX equipment used, so it's almost the same as cost of DIY. Plus it can integrate into APEX, which I already own. So all of those factors favored the Trident. Plus I'm trying to save time, and a whole DIY project...while fun...can take some effort and time to make it work.

Obviously, one of the risk with buying used equipment is that they might not work or you will need to spend time troubleshooting it to get it going. It's a gamble. But I would say 90% of my equipment is used, so I've been saving quite a bit...but takes longer to service and get it going. Once I get a few other tasks knocked out, I'll come back to get this Trident working.

 

[drexel]

Yeah, I don’t think you need to dose vinegar at this stage, you’re just gonna fuel the bad stuff.


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[Jimbo327]

I got this chamber used from another reefer (John). The external AA refugium drain is quite noisy.

I played with a few configurations, and got it to be as quiet as possible.

I added an elbow with hole drilled on top to break any potential syphon. Also, the drain pipe outlet should not be submerged (but just above the water line). This will prevent the syphon and subsequent gurgling noises of the flush.

I hope this helps anyone who buys an AA external refugium chamber in the future.

To be honest, I would not recommend anyone buying this AA external refugium chamber. The potential that something will get caught in the drain (like chaeto or snail) is too high and it will flood. There is no emergency drain, so it is a very poor design. Personally, I would not run this as a refugium as the risk to flooding is too high. I would need to drill another hole as emergency drain or build a weir if I would run this as refugium.

For now, I will just run this empty. No plans for now, maybe a very deep sand bed, miracle mud or allow bacteria to grow. All depends on how my nitrate looks when the tank settles down.

 

[DanK.Reefer]

My sand is completely covered in brown stuff and it’s got a nice clean border all the way around. Weird, right?

I’m starting to think this is not diatoms, but it is bacteria from overdosing vinegar. I’ve stopped the vinegar dosing.
View attachment 112478

Looks like Dinos or Cyano with a snail track around the edge of the glass.

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[Jimbo327]

You may be right, it could be dinos as it is more stringy and my wife says the tank smells bad. I took a whiff of the sump, and it does smell more fishy. Not good. Time to go to war on dinos.

I've started to run the UV 24/7 to try to keep it under control. I'm going to turn off the lights since I don't have any corals.

I've also read this new "Elegant Coral" method from R2R, where it says to use Dr. Tim's Waste Away...and then basically carbon dose to try to outcompete the dinos. Very interesting, and it was something that I was trying to do with the vinegar dosing.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/n03-p04-dosing-for-elegant-coral-dino-method.884275/

Going to try the UV and lights off first. If that doesn't work, then I'll try the outcompete with other bacteria again.

 

[DanK.Reefer]

I have been using the microbacter products from brightwell and it seems to be working well. I am using microbacter clean and microbacter7. I like that the 2 products are different bacterias that will over time out compete the dinos and add additional benificial bacteria to my biome. After the initial "cleanup" period they recommend weekly dosing and maintaining a low nuteient enviroment. With the idea of minimizing water changes and such that you are aiming for this may be advantageous.

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[Jimbo327]

Here is everything that I did so far:

• Turned the 90W UV on 24/7
• Increased tank temp from 80F to 83F
• Ozone 3x per day at 375mv
• Display tank lights off for whole day
• Kept skimmer on 24/7
• Dosed phosphate to 0.05+ (originally was 0.01)

It is looking much better with the brown (dino?) "stuff". It is gone from most of the rock, and just a few patches on the sand. The 90W UV is definitely doing a great job at killing this brown "stuff". I think I need more bacteria diversity.

I picked up a few nice corals at CFM yesterday, so I'm going to turn the lights back later.

 

[mchain275]

Good luck in your battle with dino's! I support the kitchen sink approach that you're taking - I also employed most of those tactics in concert along with a few other suggestions I'll lay out below. Take it all with a grain of salt, as I'm not certain that they will prove useful, but I took these additional steps based on other reefers' experiences on some of the dino mega-threads that are out there.

A lot of reefers will suggest taking a sample of the suspected dino's and examining them under a microscope (and if you have the means to take a decent magnified photo of the slide, share it on dino threads) so you can ID your particular type and address it accordingly. For instance, some are particularly prone to UV sterilizer treatment and others aren't affected at all.

I would consider any or all of the following in addition to what you're doing:

1. Dose a couple different strains of beneficial bacteria to diversify the micro-biome (I used MicroBacter 7 and MicroBacter Clean alternating).
2. Add some copepods or other microfauna to add some competitors to the food chain.
3. Keep the lights on, but if you can control the individual color diodes, dial down red and green LED's to 0% for several weeks. I think a black out will only be effective if you do a total blackout (like cover the tank so no ambient lighting gets in) for a couple days.
4. Depending on the type of dino, consider dosing silicate to essentially deliberately trigger a diatom bloom that will outcompete the dino's. But I wouldn't take this approach unless you ID your particular dino with a microscope.

If you have a separate system, I would put your CFM treasure in there rather than expose them to the dino's, unless you're prepared to gently blast them with a turkey baster once or twice daily.

 

[Jimbo327]

I think I may have the dino that are susceptible to UV because I don't see much left...and what is left is very light brown (almost gray).

I tried looking under the microscope, but I don't think my microscope is powerful enough. Because I don't see any dino's...all I can see is tons of copepods running around in my sample. The good news is those jars of galaxy pods from Algaebarn worked really well in seeding my tank. Those are caribsea sand grains in the photo. But that’s as magnified as I can get it.

 

[DanK.Reefer]

I just used my Azon store card points to buy a Microscope. Looks like they still have more available. The model is the AmScope - M40-K-MDM35 IQCREW by 120X – 1200X I bought a used return for $48 it looks like they still have one left.

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[Smite]

Hopefully you do. I know Dino’s I’ve had in the past were almost non existent by lights on, then full blown by then end of my photoperiod. Mine were sensitive to UV as they’d go free floating at night.

 

[Jimbo327]

That was exactly what happened previously, by the end of the photoperiod...it was a solid dark brown covering all the rocks and sand. Everyday, it got progressively worse and worse. And my wife said the tank really smelled "fishy", but I dismissed it because I was probably used to it. So I stuck my head in the sump and it did smell really "fishy" like low tide and decomposing organics. I was more afraid if this smell released any dino toxins.

This morning, I smelled the sump....no strong "fishy" smell. The rocks and sand look fantastic...I can see a few places that still looks like it is not fully gone. The big UV really helped knock it back.

So today, I will turn on the tank lights for a full photoperiod, and see if they make a comeback. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Jimbo327]

I just used my Azon store card points to buy a Microscope. Looks like they still have more available. The model is the AmScope - M40-K-MDM35 IQCREW by 120X – 1200X I bought a used return for $48 it looks like they still have one left.

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Let me know how you like it. It was very fun looking under the microscope. It was amazing to see the amount of life that was in the water/sand. I saw 5 types of pods, and they were just zooming around.

I need to clean up the garage and free up some space for a reef lab.

Here is a good site for algae ID:

https://algaeid.com/identification/

 

[DanK.Reefer]

I also joined this group on FB as advised by another member here. Mack's reef...Dinoflagellates support group! . The resource is very helpful. They will actively assist you in defeating the Dino's as they are helping me. They have a lot of good information to share as they are focused almost entirely on fighting Dino's and they are keeping close tabs on what works and what doesn't.

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[Jimbo327]

While I wait for the tank to do its thing, I wanted to get the APEX Trident fixed for “Test B Failed” error. Changed to all new reagents, and started a calibration and same error. Bummer.

Took the shell apart, and made sure there were no kinks in the tubing. Added some 3D printed needle holders to each bottle because I was told this improves accuracy, why not as they were super cheap on EBay (4 for $7) . Massaged all the tubing. And it successfully ran without errors! I’m going to keep it unassembled until it can run a few more tests without errors.