hi guys just thought id say hello , followed SM tread on ultimate reef , for some time until he departed company i carn t fault him for that , anyway whats the latest version of the ATS as iam nearing completion of my tank . any help i would greatly appreciate , cheers OC
Hi OC, welcome to the site!
There's several different designs being trialed at the moment, e.g. with many high powered LEDs, or diagonal, space saving (height) designs that are lit from one side. Take a peek around the forums to get an idea of what's going on.
Tom.
Howdy Ocean...
I'd say the latest would be a dual-screen with lights on the ends and the middle, and with a splash/light shield along the pipe. The big decision would be an open-design in the sump, using CFL's (easy, cheap), or a closed design in acrylic, using T5HO's (more powerful, compact, but more expensive).
i am in the process of building my sump going to feed the ats of the second down pipe ,would this work or should i use a pump.
How about a dual-screen scrubber, with each screen fed from one of the downpipes. That way you can turn one off and clean it, but still have all the overflow going through the other one (each overflow/downpipe/scrubber would need to be able to handle all the flow by itself). This is great backup too, because if you mess up one of the scrubbers somehow, you can divert all the water to the other one and still get full filtering while you fix/regrow the first one.
so i would fit ball valves to each pipe and also the pipes 32mm should i use reducers to build the pressure up for the ats , should i run a skimmer , and what else should i put in the sump or will the ats be enough cheers oc
I wouldn't bother with reducers, the pipe with the cut should spread the water fairly evenly, adding reducers can only decrease flow which will probably be a bad thing.
As for a skimmer, if it's a new tank, don't get one, if it's currently setup, wait until the ATS is mature and turn it off after (about 4-6 weeks).
The ball valves are always handy if you need to turn flow off for cleaning etc. You should use a ball valve that is one size larger than the pipe you're using and use reducers on it, so that you don't restrict the flow of the water when the valves are fully open, unless you have some funky valves that don't need it.
so let me get this right , iam running two screens of two down pipes , 3 lights ps what lighting should i use , what size should the screens be if the tanks about 128 gallons , "new tank so no skimmer " bigger ball valves than pipe to help with water flow , what else should i run in the sump off course a return pump , filter wool , miracle mud , dsb , or should i just leave all these things out , any help appreciated and last question whats the best thing to make the screen out of,?
know theres a lot of questions just wont to get it right first time .
Some sort of compact fluroescent bulbs would be a good and cheap lighting solution, just normal household 20-22W energy saving bulbs would do the job (don't use the daylight colour ones, the normal 3500k bulbs work better), obviously, try to make sure they don't get splashed, use reflectors where you can (you can make your own with tin foil for instance).
In my sump I just have the heaters and return pump plus the two return pipes that feed the skimmer + lights. Nothing else at the moment (no skimmer, foam, floss, DSB etc.)
As for the size, if you're lighting from both sides, roughly 1 square inch of screen per gallon of water, so a 12"x12" screen lit from both sides should be enough for a 128 gal tank, but this could vary depending on load on the tank (if you have lots of fish then you may want a larger screen or two).
It would be worth measuring how much water is actually flowing out of the return pipes (if you can get them to flow in a bucket, time how long it takes to fill it to work it out), take maybe 30% off that to get the flow you can expect when the slots are cut in the pipes. Using that rate, us it to calculate the width of the screen at 35 gal/hour per inch, e.g. 350gal/hour (after taking off 30%) would do a 10" wide screen, if you have two pipes, then you could have two 5" wide that are both 13-15" high. If height is a problem, then try and increase the flow so you can use a wider, but shorter screen.
Originally Posted by ocean rock
Just a quick hi.
Can't give you any advice myself as I'm a learner like yourself.
Good luck.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
