Cookiemunster

hahaha thats a funny one. I still remember your call. And I'll not eat bbq at your place too. hehehe

hi, was asked by knightx to comment on this. Thanks Diabolus. Actually I do not like to comment on other brands cos it will create unhappiness by their distributors or sales persons. So I will just comment on what you should look for in a chiller or rather how a chiller should properly function. I wish to make it clear I am not condemning any chiller brand here and my comments are just general information on what a chiller buyer should be aware of. For a 2 ft tank with slow heat buildup, it would take a very short time to chill to the desired temperature about 5 to 10mins for a real 1/2hp chiller. Off time should be at least more than 1hr unless heat build up is very fast. For this proper function to happen, you need to ensure a few things. 1) inlet and outlet to chiller pump should not be placed too close to each other otherwise, a closed loop is formed and only a very small amount is cooled and may affect the thermostat incorrectly cutting off before the entire tank is actualy cooled. 2) True rated parts must be used in the chiller. Most brands use undersized cooling chambers (the part where water is in contact with the cooling coils). This is to make the buyer think the chiller is very effective because it can chill down the tank very fast as reported by the thermostat. Usually the inlet and outlet of the chamber is also reduced to reduce or restrict flow rates. Hence what happens is the limited water in the chamber cools very fast, cutting off the thermostat, and is replaced very slowly, hence 20 to 40mins later it activates again. However, the entire tank is not yet chilled. This is less apparent in larger tanks such as 4ft. And hence creates an illusion that the tanks can be chilled by 2 or 3 degrees within 20mins even for a 4ft tank. Which is not possible. Any experienced chiller user will concur. 3)Good quality thermostat with decimal place and reliable thermo probe. A good chiller should always accurately report the same temperature as the area of the tank it is drawing water from, ie the temp measured from the suction area of the tank to the chiller. Some offset may be needed but it is usually less than +/-0.5 degrees. To sidetrack, PACIFIC COO chillers have no such problems as stated above and use quality thermostats and guaranteed true rated parts and cooling chambers. However with quality and true rated components, it comes with a certain price and hence if you compare the different brands of chillers which claim to be 1/2hp, you will see a great size difference. Normally the smaller they are, the cheaper they are as to save on freight charges, undersized parts are used. Which is why you can find chillers which cost just less than $600 and yet claim to be 1/2hp. If a new chiller runs non stop, then it simply means it is unable to cool your tank volume.

Thanks Gouldian bro for the great review. I just got back from france and still alittle jetlagged. Hi william, The amount of calcium or dkh is purely dependent on the brand of kalk you use. You can just measure the dissolved portion of any brand of kalk to determine the calc and dkh levels. A kalkreactor simple automates the daily adding or dosing of kalkwasser to the tank. There are many benefits of adding kalk. A quick search on the net will list a whole lot of articles written about it. For fast coralline growth, nothing beats dosing kalkwasser. It also helps to keep nuisance algae in check by precipitating phosphates and its very good at that. However, it was rumored that once dosing of kalk was stopped, phosphates will be released from the sand once again. That seems more of a problem for manual daily dosing where one got lazy and stopped but this would not be a problem for an automated kalk dosing system like the coral labs kalk reactor. Either way, personally I would rather the phosphate stay in the sand controlled with constant kalk dosing rather than let loose in the water without kalk dosing at all. Other benefits of kalk include 1) buffering of ph at constant 8 to 8.4ph. 2) precipitation of phosphates 3) counterbalancing low ph caused by use of calcium reactors (due to their CO2 needs) 4) better water conditioning 5) excellent coralline growth within weeks. (you'll see the difference) 6) cheap to use 7) sufficient to supply basic calcium and dkh needs for softies or LPS tanks where calcium reactor would be overkill and too expensive. Even in tanks with low evaporation rates or those using chillers, the use of the coral labs kalk reactor still ensures more kalk is dosed into the tank safely and slowly than with manual dosing. Not forgetting, after a month of manual dosing, it gets very tiring to have to mix kalk daily for dosing. And when no one is around due to work commitments or holidays or reservist etc, it still does the job for you. Maintainance is only needed about once every 1 to 2 months for washing out all the residue in the KR. And that can be done easily with the removeable base and at your own leisure or time. Its not so stringent to say that maintainance has to be done at some fixed time or so. This is not a military system after all.

Thanks triggerfish for the nice review. I've been offline these few weeks due to heavy workload. I apologise if anyone pmed me and did not get any reply. I'm not able to build as fast as the other DIYers here as I am quite busy with my own work. Typrobin bro, the base was designed to be this big. However believe me, its not a short or small unit. This beckett is really big. Cylinder is 8inch. I had to design with a balance to using smaller pumps such as md40 and yet be able to take power pumps like the md 70 when upgraded. Hence the outlet I'm using is a 1.5inch Spears gate valve too. Frankly speaking I was never a believer in beckett. I still prefer the energy efficient needlewheels. But when you see skimmate from a beckect, its hard not to be a convert. Triggerfish the skimmate from the beckett powered just by a md 40 is quite impressive. Even if I say so myself. hehehe. But when you wish to upgrade in future, you will find the md 55 giving at least 3 times more skimmate and much much darker too. You can take a look at the skimmate at Pacific Aquatic shop hooked to their display tank at pasir ris L32D. They are using md55. Once again thanks for the review.

Yeah and I am the friend that always kena baby bluff talk. (Pian xiao hai zhi).

Pls see below Le kalk last unit for sale brand new PM me if interested. Thanks

Hi bro, congrats on your new setup. Your baby pink yuma melted away liao, peeled off from rock and drifted off then started to melt. Same fate. Damn sian. hahaha. At least I owned a pink yuma that was really good. Thanks man. I wanted to give you some rics but my last frag was all unsuccessful, ended up all melted. Have to start over again. Bloody tank got some problem with water quality.

Bro no offense but I find your results not at all possible. A 1/3hp chiller manages to cool 1degree in a 5ft tank with 3ft sump in just 1hr? Can you verify your ambient room temp, whether you are using alot of fans and whether the 1 degree is measured in the tank or from the thermostat reading of the chiller itself? I would say this is only possible for a tank in an aircon room. I just want to highlight that you need to measure your tank temp for accurate measurement readings. And not read off from the thermostat of the chiller. For example, many chillers use a small heat exchanger which stores very little volume of tank water at each time. As such this volume is easily cooled down very fast. But similarly heats up very fast too after the chiller cuts out. Bawater was using a certain chiller brand (which I won't reveal here but its not daeil) which managed to cool his tank from 30 to 26 in just 40mins, and then cutoff. But after 15mins it would cut in again because the temp raised back to 30 very quickly. He suspected it was a faulty thermostat so asked me to change it for him. But even after changing to a new more accurate thermostat with 2 dec places, he still had this problem. Upon further investigation, I realised it was due to the extremely small size of the heat exchanger (where water enters and exits and where the cooling coils are). Using too slow a chiller pump and because the inlet and outlet was very small, the flowrate was forced to be greatly reduced. Hence it gave a misconception that the tank was cooling very fast and the chiller was super efficient. But when he used a good thermometer to monitor his tank temp, he found the temp had hardly moved a degree. Do not misunderstand I am not saying any brand is good or bad here. I am just stating facts to prevent any misconceptions about the true power of chillers. Its all a matter of thermodynamics. The performance of any chiller can be increased with better design but still it lies in a limited bandwidth for that horsepower. Theres just no way a 1/3hp chiller can ever cool down a 5ft with 3ft sump tank using 2x250W mh lights. 1/2hp yes but will still run for about 5hrs at best unless the ambient temp of the room is very close to the set temp. Many reefers have been buying under rated chillers because of this misconception thinking smaller the better and less cost. End up they regret and are forced to sell, resulting in loss of more money. I have a few friends who insisted the small chillers they use are effective and can chill down their tanks effectively. But later during the hot months, it starts to fail due to overwork and stress and never able to bring the temp down to the set point. If you need to get a chiller, make sure you get 1 which is suited for your tank volume and heat gain needs. Otherwise, its better to just use alot of fans. I am not trying to pull down or promote any brand. But I do not want reefers to be misled or have a wrong misconception about choosing the correct rated chiller to match their tank needs.

Hi bro, thanks for the review. I wish to clarify some points you mentioned. 1) Regarding the trapped air in the hose clamp, its not CO2 gas. At your bubble rate, its not possible for CO2 gas to be trapped and not dissolve in the liquid instead. More likely its due to the backsyphoning of air from the outside when the water squirts out from that clamped point. Otherwise its also possible its from the remaining normal air trapped in the ARM media. Once you shake the whole cylinder you'll see what I mean. Lots of bubbles raise from trapped air pockets in the media. These will disappear in a few days of running. 2) The backsyphoning into the CO2 tube only happens cos you're using solenoid valves. When it stops, it should still have a slight CO2 back pressure. I suspect your solenoid valve is leaking slightly or your CO2 cylinder is low on gas. And in any case the only type of check valve that can prevent backflow are the industrial brass types. I have tried every brand including the stainless steel ones sold at fish shops and they turn out worse. 3) with regard to your dropping kh. Could it be you turned off your solenoid too often? With a reactor this size it has absolutely no problems maintening kh and calcium for up to 5 ft tanks even. I would strongly recommend you remove the solenoid valve and stay with 1 bubble every 4 secs which is actually very very very low bubble rate already. Customers using my 10kg capacity calcium reactors only use 1 bubble every 10 sec and still manage to maintain calc at 440 and dkh of 10 with a 5ft tank with high sps stocking. Your effluent drip rate is also too slow. Please double it as I recommended otherwise you are not maximizing its effectiveness. However I would strongly recommend my new calcium reactor design if not for your space constraints. It solves the dancing bubble counter problems, has true fluidizing effect, has no troublesome centre pipe blocking media refills and has better CO2 recirculation.

hahaha yes. Nice DIY. You even DIYed the float switch...thats a good job. However, I would advice to go for a off the shelf float switch as its much safer and hassle free. These are easily available in SIM LIM TOWER. Remember to get the vertical float switch similar to your design. cheers

Hi its hard to give comments. Not enough photo and info. But as a general comment, always ensure the outlet pipe is double the size of the water inlet pipe. This will prevent risks of overflood in the main tank. Its also good to have an overflow box instead of just a pipe outlet to prevent snails or fish etc getting sucked down or blocking the outlet pipe. The surface of the water is also cleaned when it can overflow into an overflow compartment. Otherwise you will find a oily film constantly on the surface of the water.

The only effective phosphate removals I know of by personal experience is Rhowaphos and contraphos. I guess if they mix it with carbon together to sell as a package they should have thought of not mixing ingredients in their products which will cancel each other out. But for mixing 2 different brands together, I think no matter what theres always a risk of them neutralising each other even to a little extent. If they are placed in different bags, I think shouldn't be too much of a problem. However if they are mixed together, then I believe some kind of self neutralising effect will happen. However we will never know until someone conducts a proper test. Bwilly thanks for the great review. I'll meet up with you one day to pass you the ball valve. hahaha don't know how I could have forgotten. Fuel is right. Its better to use a dual hose nipple to connect different hose sizes together. Much safer than using cable tie. But like what you said, low pressure so not so much of a worry. As for even spread of water, I really don't think its possible to expect even flow upwards cos if you study the flow of air bubbles, theres always a preferred direction of flow with least resistance. And anyway in this case, very slow water flow is required so it doesn't really matter. Although you don't see it, diffusion will ensure total usage of media even in the side you don't see. And because of bottom up flow, gravity doesn't compact the media so the media usage is maximised.

thanks guys, reserved by UncleLiew.

Hi, after switching to my 250W DIY clip on, I'm now letting go of my 150W set. Comes as shown in photo below without wires and the g clamps . Includes the Radium bulb. Total paid was Radium bulb $130 Casing with ballast $120 total :$250 Selling $120 for everything. Used since Feb 2004. You can read the post below for more info too. 150W clip on MH

I now use this as a strong supplement for my SPS concentrated cliff and my 19 clams below the cliff on various positions. No more shadows and fully maximised reef shelving. By the way I am not selling this and neither am I helping people to DIY it. I just wanted to share how it can be done. The 1000W halogen casing can be found at most lighting shops.

Side view. The angle it shines downwards is great in removing shadows caused by overhanging cliffs. The grey fixture on the right is my original RIGA light set.

Top view. I used the same clip on clamps which I introduced last year in my 150W diy clip on post. As you can see its totally weatherproof and no worries about dripping water into it.

Hi reefers, just wanted to share my new clip on DIY for 250W DE. Last year I posted my DIY 150W clip on but since then I felt it just wasn't bright enough for my clams and I needed a angular light source which can shine in the same direction where I am viewing my tank and not just from top down. The problem with top down lighting is it creates shadows. And because of limited tank space, I like to place corals such as clams or sps in such recesses or below cliffs too. Hence I find angular lighting much better as it tends to colour up the sps on the side where you view it instead of from the top. Clams can then be positioned also to face the viewing side of the glass and yet not have a reduced exposure to sufficient light. Alright back to the topic. I managed to find a 1000W Halogen casing which was weatherproof and extremely compact. It only occupies a space of about 7 inches by 10 inches. And was very light yet made of strong toughened aluminium. It also comes with a 6mm thick front glass which is sufficient to block UV rays amd a pimple reflector. I made a simple modification, cut the reflector, used a 2inch by 8 inch aluminium piece to support the FC2 legs of the 250W DE and viola done. Best of all this fixture only costs $22. I could not believe it! I originally wanted to fabricate my own fixture but what the hell!!!! Hence my price breakdown: 1) 1000W Halogen casing $22 2) FC2 legs $28 3) Electronic ballast 250W $120 4) 250W 14000k DE phoenix bulb $90 5) Old PC power cord $FOC Total: $260 For just $260 I built a brand new 250W DE using eballast which weighs only 200g compared to a 4kg 250W magnetic ballast. Less heat and no humming noise. I placed the eballast on the floor as a separate unit. Its totally sealed and very safe. Here are the photos. Weisoon, hope this helps in your choice of lighting.

Not selling tubby clone? Then thats strange cos a few reefers must have been lying to me. Such as Hammanbmw, Gerald, lightningstrike, weileong, maxima, woonming and many more. And all these were after my phone conversation with you a month ago. The reason planetg's design is so similar is cos we worked together on it. And he is my personal friend together with Alvy. DUH! When planetg sold his reactor he even told me as he did not want people to think he was doing it for sale. Reason was he wanted a bigger design thats why he sold it. So I helped him to build it. Like I said theres nothing wrong with doing a DIY for oneself. And you are right I am sensitive but its only applicable to the person who bought from me and duplicated to sell. I don't think thats called sensitive....thats called *expletive* PISSED OFF! You of all people after I already had a nice talk to settle amicably and forget this whole issue had to show off your kalkreactor design here which you built for youself but posted in a DIY section but did not want to share how it was done? I would never have said anything if it were anyone else who posted their DIY kalkreactor but you had to rub salt on a fresh wound. You should have been more thinking instead of just thinking of $$$. Don't make yourself sound so innocent. Many people here are aware of what I mean. Ervine also showed his kalkreactor which he DIYed. Did I curse or condemn him? On the contrary, I even shared some ideas with him. Fellow DIYers are not my business competitors, they are my friends. But you are different, you are not sincere in your words and I've realised you are a snake. Alvy had already warned me about you and he is absolutely right! DIYers here such as Ian, Dr Evil, Ervine, Tyrobin, Weisoon, etc are all good friends of mine. They also make their own TUBBY, kalkreactors etc but you don't see me cursing or condemning them. Instead we share plans and ideas. Thats called friendship and sincerity. Scheming, backstabbing, underhand tactics are totally unnecessary as if you have respect for another hobbyist friend, you would be more thinking in your actions. I am PISSED OFF not because of any loss of customers or money but because I am disgusted with your character and lies.

This looks exactly like the Le Kalk. Calciumreef you are really a slimeball. How many of my items are you going to duplicate? I was already gentleman enough to call you up to ask you toclarify about the tubby duplication issue about 2 months ago and you apologised and said you won't do it anymore. For those who do not know what is going on let me explain what this slimeball did. Tubby and Le Kalk are not my original creations, in fact auto top ups have been in the market for a long time. But this slimeball bought a TUBBY unit from me, reversed engineered it and duplicated it and even had the cheek to stick his own sticker on it. And to add to it, he even pmed my customers in my own sponsored section to try to sell his duplicated tubby and le kalk in MY sponsor section. I only learnt of it when his customers pmed me to ask me how to solve certain problems. This is ridiculous!!! Talk about being totally unthinking. One of my friends posed as a potential customer in my sponsor section and immediately got a pm from this slimeball. And even got photos of his so called creations. And only last week I found out from Gerald the tank maker whom I had supplied before my tubby that this slimeball approached him to sell 12 TUBBY imitations saying that he was my partner and we were working together and its the same thing. You are one freaking dispicable creature. When I talked to you on the phone 2 months ago, I told you I'd let the matter pass and that I prefer to make friends than enemies. And that its certainly no point to lower your character to such sewer depths just for the sake of a few dollars. You even had the cheek to agree and I thought we could still be friends and I was willing to forget the matter. You are very lucky I do not take this issue seriously as a business and that I am only doing this as a sideline. For otherwise what you have done is downright plagarism and theft. I would sue you to your pants. I hope you are happy with the little money you make from all this because end of the day, you have revealed yourself to be just a smiling untrustworthy snake. I have told you before that its not worth it to damage one's reputation just for a few dollars unless its millions. This is afterall just a hobby but you will never know one day who you have dealings with in life for bigger things and having a good reputation and being trustworthy is much more important than this small money. I for one will never trust you nor anything you say because I know you cannot be trusted. Gerald has also complained to me that your imitation tubby creations are giving him alot of problems and that he will not be taking from you anymore. If you were really sincere about showing people how to DIY things, when weiloong asked you would have explained. But its obvious you are just trying to make money here. Your methods kill the spirit of DIY and less and less DIY wannabes will want to improve on their designs to provide for fellow reefers because they know it will simply be just copied by people like you. I am fine with people doing DIYs for themselves or even to sell to others because thats how I started too. But as far as possible, try to be original and at least improve existing products would be good too. But downright reverse engineering and copying to make money is dirt. Below is his reversed engineered copy from a TUBBY he bought from me. He even stole reefcentral's photo to use as his own label.

Not feasible if you ask me. Reason being phyto needs fertilizer to grow properly. Lights of at least FL is required too. And since the fertilizer is made of nitrates and phosphates and takes at least 8 days to be used up by the phyto, constant dosing into your tank will create many many many many....did I mention many problems related to cyano and diatoms. And in order to grow REAL nannochloropsis phyto, the containers have to be washed and thoroughly cleaned every harvest or approximately every 10 days. Otherwise, it will still grow phyto but a different more resilent type usually diatoms will grow instead. Even constant brine shrimp hatchery is not feasible too cos it will create the same cyano problems cos the water from the shrimp hatchery cannot be added into your tank as it contains alot of nitrates and other wastes.

Wow Deepblue bro, your tank sure has improved tremendously since I last saw it. Very very well done. Keep it up.

I was contemplating building such a device too. Already found all the materials needed. But only problem is the part that gets in contact with the marine water. Aluminium cannot be used as it will corrode and produce aluminium oxide which is toxic to corals. Titanium seems to be the only option but has poor thermal conductivity especially when its used as a heat conductor via peltier. The way the commercial unit does it is to mould a metal rod which is coated. I am thinking of fabricating one too but did not have time to proceed.

Guys I'm selling rotifers if you are interested. $10 per 500ml bottle. These are live so you have to self collect from me at sengkang. PM me if you are interested.

Hahaha bro, yes if its not too inconvenient, I strongly recommend you redo a sump with drilled side outlets. Remember to place a ball valve to shut it off so that removing of the pump for maintenance purposes will not be a nightmare and will not involve you having to wear a snorkel or own a OSIM jet cleaner. Thanks for the feedback Alpha and planetg.......planetg pls pm me where to get cheap iwaki. Need one for my beckett project.