Sump went in Friday night, plumbed early Saturday.
Water went in before 7 and was only a few degrees when I added it pulling the entire system temp down to around 20C from a nice stable 25C.
The ATO res holds about 60L which is nice.. I never bothered calculating that when I designed the sump, but that might successfully let me get a week out of it. Cut a piece of laminated board and put over the top to make a shelf. Might reduce evap from the ATO, and gives me a bit of working area for the dosing pump and container.
Have an old TLF 150 reactor connected to the waste hose on my skimmer. I've used it on and off for years as a collection container on the old frag system. It should fill just before the collection cup floods.. can't get the skimmer up any higher given the crazy outlet height. I prefer to use the reactor as its out of the tank and at worst can just overflow back into the tank instead of on to the carpet. If that doesn't work out so well, I'll clamp a jug in the sump, and use that (did that previously).
A little over a day and a bit fully running with skimmer, and cup is about 1/2 full and top of neck is dirty enough.
I pushed up the ammonia the other day to push the cycle along, finally getting from 1ppm down (currently at 0.30ppm). Nitrates up around 10ppm, so seems that the cycle is humming along nicely. Once the ammo bottoms out, I'll keep giving it some little doses of ammonium chloride to keep feeding it and build it up.
I have no where near as much rock as I used to; sitting on about 50kg down from nearly twice that in the old system (a lot in the sump), and I'd eventually like to stock this a bit heavier.
The sump is pretty dull. The LED strip is really not very bright - a little lighter than in the pic, but still pretty dull. Surprisingly adequate to work in though.
To Dos:
- Brewing some more water... still can't get a vehicle in garage in order to fill my IBC, so stuck doing it the hard way.
Want to take a good chunk of this water after the cycle is finished and replace the water in the tank holding the fish atm - start to get them used to this water. It's been a long, long, long time since they've experienced new water.
- A couple of pieces of LR have some aiptasia on them. Haven't worried about them given I haven't been in the tank itself and risked pissing them off. Probably need to get on top of that nonetheless. Hammer and chisel job.
- Tidy up the electrical. It's a cramped little spot, and access isn't that easy. It does however have some isolation from the wet stuff.
I do need to find some nice way of keeping the power supplies up off the floor. Lots of excess cable and crap in there too. Really messy.
- Light timers. I've found a single timer than gives me 3 outlets with individual controls - about the same price as buying 3 regular timers, but does it on a single board, which will get me back some power point space. the Mars Aqua uses two, and the Fluval sitting along the back uses one. I could probably get rid of the fluval, but running it blue only has a night moonlighting effect.