The isopod trap

This is how I made my isopod trap

Items I used to build the trap

1 * Small jam jar (cleaned and sterilized)
1 * The top cut off a 2 litre bottle (I used a Vimto bottle)
2 *  elastic bands hair bands as I could not find any elastic bands big enough!

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Next I drilled a 6 mm hole into the bottle cap

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Then using the elastic bands to hold the cap in place, place the bottle cap inverted into the jar, so hopefully the isopods find their way in but cannot get back out.

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I bait using tetra marine crisps as they dissolve slowly an the pods really love them for some reason!!!

I have a cirolanid isopod problem :(

Whilst performing a bit of maintenance…. One of these decided to take a liking to my hand….

Now I have captured a couple more

Unfortunately after closer examination, they seem to be cirolanid isopod; which are not good to have in any marine tank. Luckily they seem to love marine flake food, so im busy trapping them to rid me of this pest.

Silencing the TMC V2 120 Skim

One thing that has really been annoying me over the last few weeks, is the horrendous noise the skimmer makes. The unit in question is the TMC v2 Skim 120 (http://85.133.58.150/Catalog/Product/24)

After a bit of playing around, I found the source of the noise is the air inlet on the unit. So time to get the Dremel out….

First step, is to split the unit as per the manufacturers instructions,

Here are some pictures of the bit we will be removing :

Now time to get the dremel and drill out…

First remove the top of the air intake :

Now I removed the blue air-intake and removed this bit

I had a bit of spare 6mm air tubing with a silencer on the end

 

So i drilled the hole that was left, out to 6mm

Now time to re-assemble…

First remove the blue pipe completely from the mixing head, and push your new hose onto this

Now re-assemble as per manufacturers instructions..

The skimmer re-assembled

Silence 🙂

Please note: this is a Guide only, I take no responsibly for you damaging your own equipment, yourself, or your tank.

LED light upgrade

So I have been busy researching on replacing the 2*18 compact pl lights that have are installed within the hood.

My main reasons for this are that

1) I want more lighting, so I can have more complex coral
2) I want to reduce the running costs (60 GPB every 6 months for bulb replacements will be expensive) along with the current load which for the hood is approx 70(ish) watts
3) To reduce the total heat load on the system, currently I am evaporating 1-2l of water a day
4) I want to keep the hood on the display tank

So to look at off the shelf units, the TMC Aquabeam 100 reef light is sort of what I require (http://85.133.58.150/Catalog/Product/2834); however, this unit on its own is over 200 gpb, and the lighting controller is around 80 gpb… I would really like a bit more light (so 1.5 of these units)…

So time to investigate a home build solution, which will be integrated with the new Raspberry Pi I have on order (so to get some nice lighting effects),

So what I can calculate so far (I am awaiting some demo units from china to confirm my calculations)

the system will need a total of (hardware)

7* Cree XPG Q5 LED’s
8 * Cree XRE Royal Blue LED’s
2 * dimmable 27w constant current led drivers (maybe more at a lesser wattage depending on my effects programmming)
1 * 300mm x 250mm heatsink
1 * (possibly) 120mm fan
10 * xml 80 deg lenses
5 * XRE 80 deg lenses

a shed load of C++ code to control it all…

so here’s awaiting the samples so I can “test” things 🙂