New tank!

Hey everybody! I am new the reef keeping, and thought I would share a couple of pictures from my new hobby.

My wife and I used to keep fresh water tanks, but sold them years ago when we started having kids. Well, thanks to a neighbor that offered us a tank, we have been slowly getting back into it. We are learning as we go - that is for sure!

The display tank is a tall 65 gallon tank that sits in my home office. All the initial filtration we got was HOB, but we quickly upgraded everything. I now have a 30 gallon sump/refugium in my basement that we plumbed for it.

And being the tinkerer that I am, I have built my own controller for it. So far, the controller monitors and tracks (over time for trending) my pH, salinity, temperature and dissolved oxygen, as well as controlling my ATO, protein skimmer overflow, heater, etc. And it sends me emails if the levels exceed a certain threshold (pH too low, protein skimmer bucket full, ATO empty, etc)... It will even cut the power to my system if it detects water outside the tank... My next goal with it will be to automate some of the chemical reaction tests (calcium, alk, nitrates, etc) - all in due time.

Anyway I will have tons of questions as we keep going here, but thought I would share a few pictures....

Here is the main tank:

And again:

Trigger sump w/ refugium in basement right under the main tank:

And a couple of shots of my home made controller:

I call it Aquaduino:

As you can see, I am having problems keeping my pH up!

I am always up for suggestions / tips - so comment away if anybody has any suggestions or tips!

 

Thanks for all the input guys!

Ryan - yes I really like the lights. So for anybody interested - I purchased the AI Hydra 26 lights. They really are pretty cool, but they have a substantial hardware flaw. The wireless connectivity in them is terrible. They were not able to even see my ASUS AC rated router (in the next room over) despite the fact that there was nothing interfering on that channel and a quick wifi analysis standing right next to the lights saw that the wifi signal right there was -30dBm (which is really good). I had to go out and buy a separate N-rated router to set as a wireless access point and attach it to my wall less than 3 feet away from the lights in order for them to pull a strong enough signal to do anything with. I worked directly with their developer and he couldn't figure it out, only saying that the wifi module in the lights wasn't that powerful and they wouldn't be able to pull a signal nearly as well as a cell phone would. So unless you have a router/wireless access point or wifi extender a few feet from the lights, I don't think I could recommend them to anybody.

 

I used a Mega 2560. I could have used an Ethernet Shield to connect it, but I didn't have an easy way to run a CAT-5 line to the system, so I instead used an ESP8266 (specifically the NodeMCU v1.0) and connected it to the Mega via Serial2. Since the ESP8266 is a 3.3V board, I am using a level shifter (small red board between the Mega and the ESP8266).

All of the probes I am using are from Atlas Scientific. And I am using their circuits and power isolators. They all connect to the I2C bus.

I am also have a 20x4 I2C LCD display that connects to the bus (the 4 pin screw terminals towards the middle).

I am using an I2C RTC for scheduled tasks (including triggering the fuge light at a specific time).

The keypad is used for calibration.

There are two tactile push buttons - they are just used for scrolling through the LCD display to various pages.

There are 6 screw terminals towards the bottom that connect to a 5V 6 channel relay board.

Anyway that is the basic circuit... Hope this at least gets you started.

 

I sent you a PM with a link to the hi-res picture...

 

Yeah I had them send me a replacement of both my lights and they seem decent now. With an N-rated router right next to them they seem to hold the connection now. But for $300+ per light one would expect this to not be an issue.