by AquaNerd | Sep 9, 2014 | Equipment, Industry, Tanks, Technology
For the longest time, Bluetooth technology was one of those highly touted bullet point features of multiple aquarium products offered from lots of different brands. It was supposed to revolutionize how hobbyists communicated with their aquarium equipment. The devices could be controlled wirelessly by all sorts of Bluetooth enabled devices, but due to its severely limited range, it was quickly overtaken by WiFi, which offered worldwide functionality via the internet. Thankfully, those Bluetooth products aren’t in any way obsolete thanks to a new device from Pacific Sun. Called the Cube, this simple little device acts as a bridge between Bluetooth and WiFi signals, allowing formerly Bluetooth only devices to connect to a wireless network and receive work direction from any place in the world.The Pacific Sun Cube will be available in 4Q 2014, which is less than a month away, and it will be compatible with all of their existing products like the LED/Hybrid fixture, T5HO fixtures, dosers, etc. A mobil and computer based app will accompany the release of the Cube, and all of the data will live in the cloud, another ever growing feature of the aquarium industry.Pricing will be announced upon the Cube’s release. In the meantime, check out these screen captures of the software. This entry was posted in Aquarium Equipment and tagged Aquarium Equipment, pacific sun, Pacific Sun Cube by Brandon Klaus. Bookmark the permalink. by Tami Weiss | Jul 28, 2014 | DIY, Equipment, Fish, Science, Seahorses, Tanks
Summers can be deadly to seahorses. Are you prepared to cool them down? Summer’s here, and seahorse aquarists are starting to see tank temperatures rise. Seahorses, are particularly vulnerable to warmer temperatures , so for many seahorse aquarists, even moderate heat can lead to a mad dash to lower the water temperature. The consequences of warm water can be deadly for seahorses. Bacteria spread at a faster rate in warmer water, so the warmer it gets, the more likely you are to see illness pop up in your aquarium. Another often overlooked problem is that warmer water holds less oxygen, stressing out the inhabitants of your aquarium. This tends to be worse for seahorses than other fish due to their lobed gill structure. Fans, your first line of defense Often, open tops with fans blowing across the water is enough to drop temp a few degrees. This works by evaporative cooling. Removing tops, and placing a fan so it blows across the water will make the water evaporate much faster, cooling the tank. You can easily drop a tank below the ambient temperature if you have enough evaporative cooling. Theoretically, you can drop as much as 18F degrees below ambient temperatures. Realistically, you are going to see a drop of between 3 and 5 degrees in a home aquarium. (More about evaporative cooling here.) Ways to improve evaporative cooling is to have the fan blowing across the longest part of the tank. Aiding evaporation can be done by increasing surface movement. Position power heads and add air pumps to create more movement. If you have a sump, you can help things out by placing a fan across the sump as well. Keeping the stand doors open will help heat from equipment dissipate. Be sure if you have fish that could be jumpers that the tank has some form of mesh over the top to keep them from making their final leap. You can use egg crate to fashion a top, or pond mesh and aluminum window frames. Do remember that with evaporative cooling, you will lose significantly more water through evaporation than normal. Keeping an eye on the tank, or even adding an auto top-off unit to replenish the tank will be necessary. Evaporative cooling works best in dry climates. Someone in Arizona will have better results than someone in Florida. However, if air conditioning is being used, you have a dehumidifier build in, and can get to lower humidity levels to keep the tank cool. Air Conditioning Often when people think cooling a tank, they think they need to resort to a chiller. That’s not always the case! Often times it’s cheaper to get a room air conditioner and run it rather than buying a whole chiller. And for bonus points, you get a cool room. Of course, it depends where you live, where your tank is set up, and what your electricity prices are like. But it’s always a good idea to at least consider air conditioning. Small units can be had for under $100. If you have odd shaped windows you can get a portable air conditioner. Portable air conditioners carry warm air out via a hose that you connect to a window. They do take up floor space, and some people think they’re loud; but they provide an option for those of us with weird windows. Check Your Equipment There are many ways you can change your equipment setup to help remove heat. Reducing equipment, externalizing equipment, and even cleaning equipment can all help. Reduce Equipment If you’re running several powerheads to keep water moving, a pump from the sump to the tank, and a pump for the skimmer, you could easily be dumping a large amount of heat into your aquarium. Reducing those items while keeping the water moving is a great way to lower the temperature of the tank. Multiple powerheads can be replaced with a single, well designed closed loop. Upgrade Equipment Older equipment is likely to draw more power mom less umph. The additional power translates to additional heat in the tank. Newer, low watt pumps can lower the overall energy consumption along with the heat output. Don’t forget the lowly air pump! Most are low watt and can move around a substantial amount of water, even if it’s not in the way we’re used to in an aquarium. But they can work to keep the surface agitated with very little cost or heat addition. Externalize Equipment Every piece of equipment in the tank adds to the heat overload. If you can externalize the pumps that are in your aquarium, you’re reducing a lot of the equipment heat. External sump pumps can be plumbed alongside your sump. Internal powerheads can be upgraded to those with external motors, such as a VorTech (just be sure to use the foam covering to keep seahorse tails out). Clean Equipment Because our tanks are alkaline with a lot of minerals, calcium deposits occur inside our pump housing. This creates friction, and friction is heat. It may sound like a simple step, but cleaning your pumps every couple of months can help keep the temperature in check. A good vinegar soak followed by a thorough rinsing will remove calcium deposits with ease. Chiller A chiller is often the nuclear option in high temperature situations. They are expensive and take up space. And you need to be sure you’ve chosen one that can cool your aquarium to the right temperature. There are many low cost models out there that don’t cool as much as they purport to cool, so checking reviews is essential. Pet Education has a great article on choosing the right chiller Chiller Sizing Calculator DIY Chiller One way to go about a chiller on a budget is to make your own. While they are rarely pretty, they are an option for those on a budget or just like the challenge of building something themselves.Most rely on a dorm fridge which can often be had for next to nothing, and a big coil of aquarium tubing where water passing through, is cooled, and passed back into the aquarium. DIY Chiller ideas: DIY Evaporative ChillerRefrigerator ChillerDIY chillerAnother DIY ChillerDIY ChillingDIY Do It Yourself Aquarium Chiller Basement If you’re in a warm climate and air conditioning or a chiller isn’t an option, but have access to a basement, sometimes the reality is that it might be the best place for your aquarium. Placing in the basement is not something you can do quickly during a heatwave, but if you’re deciding where to set up your aquarium, be sure to think of what the conditions are going to be like throughout the year. Sometimes placement in the basement is just a fact of life. If you have a concrete floor, you can even take advantage of natural cooling by placing the aquarium sump directly on the concrete rather than raising it up to sit on wood inside the stand. It may take some clever modifications, or a custom built stand, but can be well worth the cooling effect of the concrete. Ice in Emergencies Keeping a couple bottles of ice in the freezer can be a lifesaver. They don’t take up much space, but in an emergency such as a/c or power outage in a heat wave, they could make all the difference in the world. The downside is that you don’t have much control over the cooling. But they could end up saving your seahorses. If you don’t have bottles of ice, and need something FAST, regular ice can be used, but place it in a ziplock bag so it doesn’t melt into the tank. You don’t want it diluting the tank, only cooling. Ice Chiller In a prolonged emergency or unexpected heat wave, you can make a temporary chiller out of a cooler, ice, a coil of aquarium tubing (at least 75’) and a pump to push the water through the tubing coiled up in the cooler. A more detailed explanation. Following the above advice should let you cool your seahorse aquarium to safe temperatures with ease, leaving you, and your seahorses to sleep better at night. DIY Ice Air Conditioner You can even make an air conditioner using a number of inexpensive parts if you’re really in a bind. The idea is to have a fan pushing cold air out of a container. The essentials are a small fan, ice, and a container for the ice. Youtube has a couple examples, one using a 5 gallon bucket, and another using a cooler. I suspect neither would last long term, but they might be a good short term solution for cooling a room with aquariums rather than trying to cool each room. And they’re dirt cheap to build. Do you have any tips and tricks for aquarium cooling? Leave them in the comments below! This entry was posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2014 at 11:53 am and is filed under Aquarium Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. by Rich Ross | May 14, 2014 | Events, Fish, Science
There are two Academy groups currently in the Philippines for the 2014 Biodiversity Expedition: one from Research, and the other from the Aquarium. Though we’re staying at different locations, we collaborate when we can, like tonight. It all started with a 90-minute night dive at Anilao Pier to try to collect a Bobbitt worm—a creature that lives in the sand, has jaws like a bear trap, and might be several meters long. It shoots up with lightning speed to catch fish and other animals, yanking them down into the muck like something out of a nightmare. In the 1990s, Academy Senior Curator Terry Gosliner named the Bobbitt worm after Lorena Bobbitt (and her legendary attack on her husband), and Academy crews have been trying to collect this animal both for display and for our preserved collection ever since. One look at the photo shows you why catching this animal isn’t easy, but take a look at this video for an even better demonstration. Tonight’s effort was unsuccessful, though I did get my hand on one of the worms—yes, my hand. My wife is less than thrilled about these attempts, but she understands that we have to do what we have to do for science. More efforts are planned, and hopefully there will be success. Hopefully. After the worm hunt, there was a party—a party that started without us. Apparently it began with a whole roast pig (enjoyed by both Research and Aquarium Staff), but by the time the worm hunters arrived, things had changed drastically. Let’s just say that while there was still much fun to be had, there wasn’t much pig. Expeditions like this are an amazing amount of work, similar to running a triathlon. Instead of the events being swimming, running, and biking, the events are collection, processing, and animal care. The endurance needed to put out so much energy every single day is huge, but it’s also incredibly fulfilling when everything’s going well. Tonight’s party was a short break from the draining but rewarding work of the expedition … and the only picture I can find of the event is this one of me gnawing on a pig’s head. Ah, science—we love you. —Rich Ross, Aquatic Biologist by AquaNerd | May 7, 2014 | Equipment, Industry, Tanks, Technology
Innovative Marine is back with another ground breaking product for the world of all-in-one marine aquaria. Announced just yesterday, and in a far too subtle fashion in our opinions, the SkimMate Ghost is a new protein skimmer that looks to bring serious performance to IM’s AUQA GADGET lineup. The SkimMate Ghost is a drop-in skimmer that will be available in three distinct sizes, each of which will fit nicely into the rear chambers of the NUVO aquariums whose name they bare. For example, the SkimMate Ghost DeskTop skimmer is designed to function seamlessly with the DeskTop model of the NUVO aquariums, and so on. In terms of features, the Ghost will sport a compact design that recirculates bubbles passively to increase dwell time. Additionally, the skimmer has an enlarged inline air silencer box, a bubble diffusing plate, an adjustable air valve, and a needle wheel impeller. The design keeps the air line tubing neat and kink free, and the collection cup design isn’t all too different from other popular drop-in skimmers that have been around for a while. by AquaNerd | Apr 24, 2014 | Corals, Equipment, Industry, Tanks
Reef Octopus is breaking out the DC skimmer pumps once again in this new protein skimmer release. Called the Regal Skimmers, this line of foam fractionators looks quite similar to the Super Reef Octopus Space Saving skimmers of recent memory, but will feature Reef Octopus’ own brand of DC controllable pumps. The pumps, which RO has been marketing extensively since MACNA last year, are becoming more incorporated into the product line, and for good reason. The controller allows for fine tuning of the pump’s speed, which affects things like air draw and the all important air-to-water ratio. Unlike the SRO skimmers, the new Regal line will feature red accent pieces laid over clear and white arcylic. This color scheme falls in line with the rest of what Reef Octopus has been doing, as their Prime skimmers sport a hefty amout of red as well. In terms of tank sizes, pump ratings, prices, and the like, we don’t fully know what the Regal skimmers will offer
