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Are red sea salt water tanks as good as everyone says My buddy had a 16 gallon nano cube a decade ago, and I had some shrimp living in a 1 gallon pico salt tank with some live rock for a while at the same time and really enjoyed it Finally have some space for this hobby thinking about a reef aquarium. Seems like the best option is to get the biggest reasonable tank (75-250 gal) as the volume of water helps shock absorb small changes in the environment and minimizes wild swings in the water chemistry Seems like all the 250 gallon pumps and skimmers cost about double that of what your 16 gallon size stuff does, and you'll need more rock and sand (mostly one time costs) but once you get going it's just good and water changes which is less than $100/mo. Seems like the time commitment of cleaning the glass and testing the water, feeding the fish is about the same with a 16 gallon as a 250 gallon, is that about right On a totally unrelated note what do you guys think of the red sea 900 3xl announced last fall
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Jun 17, 2020 02:51
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Ok Comboomer posted:I would not go from 1gal to 250. Have you considered like maybe a 20-55 gal to start out with? It's plenty big for most spaces, really! That'll give you enough volume where you'll largely be protected from deadly water chemistry or temp swings but you won't also have to do 25 gallon weekly water changes, and where you won't risk nuking 250 gal worth of livestock when you make a first-year fuckup. Our house is about 75-80F year round due to our window/exposure situation so I think heat would be ok. It doesn't really get warmer than 87 here ever and that's only sitting right by the window Tank would sit near the kitchen, in the dining room 20' from a window, close enough to use a 6' tube to the sink drain and also do RO. Looks like most people are buying a 30 gallon plastic tub from Walmart to do their 10% water changes? Would this work: Run RO on a timer to generate 25 gallons RO water into tub on kitchen counter, stored above water level of the aquarium's sump (2-3' above the floor) Mix in salt to correct ratio, test Drain 25 gal to sink drain directly from display tank Replace with salted RO water via sump tank with pump on I'm guessing the $60-100, 100 gal RO three stage filters on Amazon are not the models I want, or else why wouldn't everyone just use those I'm guessing all of the above is a fantasy, I'm just curious what the reality is. Hadlock fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jun 18, 2020 |
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Jun 18, 2020 22:46
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:In case this place explodes Oh, so that's happening. Thanks for the heads up
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Jun 25, 2020 01:16
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Krispy Wafer posted:Strangely, algae is out of control and I haven't had a chance to change my water, but my nitrates are way down and all the other parameters are looking good. So the tank looks terrible, but the fish are doing alright. Just for my own curiosity, is the nitrate level low because the algae is consuming it at a higher rate? Presumably the algae is a heavy feeder of nitrates
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Aug 2, 2020 00:34
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Put together a 450 gallon above ground pond for father's day. It is about 6' x 5' x 2' deep Started out about two weeks ago with a bowl full of water, added some dirt from the pond site, leaves, moss, sticks from the immediate area in an attempt to cultivate something approaching local outdoor acquaculture to prime the pond. It's now a disgusting mosquito larvae infested dish. Soon to be fish food I guess. Color of the water looks like tea, orange brown but clear Some pond plants arrived, tossed them in large Tupperware storage bin with a pump. My toddler promptly disassembled them but I think a few survived. Innoculated the Tupperware container with two ounces of water from the bowl of mosquitoes. With the aquatic plants and no fish the water has stayed very clear. I think I have ~4 lbs of ceramic and plastic bio balls in there Pond is just screwed together pressure treated (rot resistant) lumber from Lowe's, and an Amazon 10x13' pond liner. Took almost two hours to fill this afternoon. Tossed a 650gph pond pump with ceramic and plastic bio media, and a UV light in the pond after running it for a bit in a bucket. Top is trimmed with raw, rot resistant cedar. Didn't have enough will need to come back and fill in some gaps Water temp is ~75 degrees? With the pump and heat I would imagine most of the chlorine will be out by tomorrow. I've been adding an ounce from the bowl and six oz from the Tupperware container every 4 hours to seed the pond. Also transferred the 4lbs ceramic hollow pellets to the pond Thinking about putting a single goldfish in tomorrow afternoon, and later this week two more, plus about a dozen neon tetras and see how the tank does I have a ~15 gallon ceramic vase I'm going to put in the corner, fill it with the ceramic and bio balls and do an upwelling bog filter thing that water falls back into the pond on one end    Water level comes up to about shoulder level on my toddler. So I'll need to keep an eye on her, but not super concerned about it being a drowning hazard as she's supervised in the back yard In the photos, the sun rises on the left, then behind the fence/tree and filters through several other trees in the late afternoon so not a lot of direct sunlight but gets 6x6" patches throughout the day, tons of indirect sunlight Wife wants the neighbor's Japanese maple trimmed back, going to wait a few days on that and do the bare minimum
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Jun 20, 2022 09:02
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Warbadger posted:How far North are you? A lot of interesting options out there depending on temperature. I'm about halfway between Charleston SC and Norfolk, something like USDA zone 7a/b which means it never gets below 20F for more than a few days, but once a decade it gets down to 10F for 12 hours and is cold enough to kill anything that even looks like a citrus We ended up with two goldfish fantails and 2 orange and white comet, which I understand are pretty hardy
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Jun 21, 2022 00:43
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Stoca Zola posted:Looks pretty good for now, although I don’t know much about above ground ponds like that. I’m still working on my 8’ x 11’ hole in the ground pond, I’ve been digging it by hand on and off since November but I think I’m nearly done digging. The clay at the level I’m digging is tough to get through! I was breaking it up with a pick but the repeated impacts made my carpal tunnel flare up so I switched to a 5 foot digging/wrecking bar. Breaks off smaller pieces but I can go faster and without hurting myself. Really not as fun as swinging a pick though. Only pic I could find is from when I was roughing out the hole for the skimmer box, the box is in position and levelled now and I’ve just got the deepest level of the pond left to dig. There’s 3 layers inside the pond and a mini layer at the top to hold the rocks at the edge of the pond liner in place. In theory the rocks disguise the edge of the liner, stop it from being exposed to UV from the sun, and if done right should make changes in water level due to evaporation much less obvious. This is exactly why I did an above-ground pond. 0 to pond in about 8 hours, plus a week or two of waiting for Pond Things to arrive via amazon, vs 8 months of digging If this is a success, in the fall we're going to rent a one ton excavator: https://www.compactpowerrents.com/rental-equipment/mini-excavator/1-ton-mini-excavator/ For about $300(!!! cheap) and dig out one, possibly two (connected) 6x6 ponds ~2-3 ft deep in the front and a similar in the rear, in a day, but with a 4.5' pit to help with overwintering/temp control, something like this code:Warbadger posted:Golden Topminnows would be a reasonably good native fish option for an outdoor pond in that area. I have a dozen of these queued up in my cart to order on monday when I get back in town, along with six dwarf crawfish now, thanks!
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Jun 22, 2022 06:20
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Ordered a dozen golden topminnows and some dwarf crawfish, will hopefully be here Wednesday or Thursday and can add them to my above ground pond I've been having great luck harvesting mosquito larvae and feeding them to my fish I have a half gallon generic bowl, scoop pond water from it, then toss 3-4 magnolia (med-large) leaves in there, provides some shade + nutrient base, and 4-6 days later I have 75-200 mosquito larvae that I can just dump in the pond and the fish go crazy over, probably super nutritious + mentally stimulating (as far as that goes with ancient fish brains) to eat true live, wild food Apparently the topminnows will leap out of the water to grab a mosquito hovering above the water, which is great, I see lots of those but none actually laying eggs in the pond,I think the pump disturbs the surface too much to lay eggs in the pond
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Jun 28, 2022 09:23
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I'm honestly really impressed with the resiliency of aquatic plants. Ordered two water hyacinth and two water lettuce. Toddler was infactuated with the fibrous balls of the hyacinth and ripped both large, healthy plants to pieces. The floaty balls were shredded from one plant but with some help from me would float upright and new growth was appearing, but eventually died. The other one had half a floaty ball left and it's trucking along, looking like it'll make a full recovery The water lettuce, she ripped all but two leaves off of one and mostly ignored the second . The first one regrew all of it's leaves, the second one has spawned three "pups" already, one disconnected on it's own and is filtering my tupperware backup pond now Golden topminnows arrived, along with some dwarf crayfish, topminnows living up to their name. I haven't seen them eat a mosquito yet but in the evenings it's not uncommon to see them buzzing over the water. I guess I need to go get some bloodworms from the fish store? They came in the mail so they're probably hungry. Dwarf crayfish went into my pond and immediately disappeared, probably never to be seen again, they're dark brown on a black pond liner. But I guess they eat algae so that's nice 
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Jul 2, 2022 20:00
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Yeah I am honestly surprised it's legal to ship across state lines at all, but yes duly noted
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Jul 2, 2022 22:05
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Above ground pond update Had a tropical depression blow through. Due to inital quality/engineering lack of foresight, already was having structural problems, mostly mended with metal plates, planned on picking up some ratcheting cargo straps to shore up some failed fasteners and then reinforce with more metal plates. This seemed adequate until I could schedule more time to properly fix the problem (move fish to alternate holding area, drain pond, fix pond, fill/dechrlorinate, add fish back) Anyways, storm dropped about 4" of water into the pond causing untold additional stresses I hadn't been planning on addressing between now and tuesday (fix-it day) End up going out during the middle of a thunderstorm, emptied about 40 gallons (10% of max capacity) on to the already water-logged ground, now I'm standing in ankle-deep water at the top of a hill, under a tree all around me sounds like we're being bombed from thunder, wondering when I'm going to get electricuted Also, an anole (tiny iguana looking thing about 4" long) apparently fell into the pond and drowned  there are about four in my back yard, I think this was the guy who lived near the top of the tree by my office window
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Jul 4, 2022 06:44
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Hadlock posted:Put together a 450 gallon above ground pond for father's day. It is about 6' x 5' x 2' deep Above ground pond still doing good, water clarity isn't crystal clear but pretty close First image, those orange things are goldfish  Second image, is about half of my school of 12 golden topminnows  I have about 100 1" plastic bio sponge balls placed ~near my pump in two bags, as well as 2x 1lb ceramic rings at the bottom of the pond, and the filter/pump combo has about half as many incorporated into it, plus a UV filter. Pretty happy with how clear the water is. Probably helps that it's under a great big tree and 80% shaded most of the day, 95% shaded the rest of the time Currently 3x 3.5" goldfish, 12x 1-2" (full grown) golden topminnows Thinking about adding another three or four 2-3" goldfish? Pond is about 300-450gal depending on how much water is in it Hadlock fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 22:30
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I'd guess my goldfish have, I dunno, not doubled in length, but sure seems like they've doubled in volume in the last six weeks. Definitely 3" long moving up to 4" I put in 5 dwarf crayfish, I haven't seen them since they went in, I think largely because they camouflage perfectly against the black pond liner. With four goldfish what are the chances they ate all of them? There's some ground cover, a couple fake plants, a brick tunnel and some bags of filter medium and left over plant pots but it's not super significant, nothing like a reef Put in 10 cherry shrimp, the goldfish mostly ignore the shrimp but my topminnows pay close attention if they stray too close. Probably just really expensive fish food Thinking I need to build a better reef out of some leftover bricks, provide cover where the fish can't reach them? Or just accept that shrimp and crayfish won't survive in this pond
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Aug 3, 2022 22:17
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How hardy are rice fish From YouTube kind of looks like people keep them in pots on their roof in full sun, get kind of sluggish when the pond water starts to ice over but bounce right back? Seems like the ideal fish pond fish Edit: my summertime pond water temp seems to be 75-82F Hadlock fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Aug 5, 2022 |
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Aug 5, 2022 02:23
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Is it particularly stressful to net fish and move them to a separate tank for ~8 hours (using the water from the original tank) I need to drain my pond 50-80% to do some structural work on it, there's enough water I think the fish would be fine in the remaining 70-100 gallons, but mildly concerned about slurping up a curious fish or two with the hose I'm gonna use to siphon out most of the water
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Aug 5, 2022 18:44
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It's just a great big all in one pond pump, filter and uv thing I guess I can throw a sock over it with a couple rubber bands
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Aug 5, 2022 19:09
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My first week my goldfish were still exploring the pod By week 4 they sort of figured out I was the one bringing them food By week 6 the topminnows started relaxing a bit, they no longer hover on the far side of the pond until I leave anymore, but they still won't come within arm's reach except one or two. Goldfish definitely know they're about to get fed, start zooming around
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Aug 8, 2022 00:23
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Classroom grade USB microscopes are suprisingly affordable
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Aug 8, 2022 17:02
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Went to feed fish in pond, see a large hawk fly out of the corner of my yard. Fish acting weird. Usually the goldfish sweep up a ton of food immediately, see one fish hiding under the pond pump electric cord. Realize there are no other goldfish. Upon inspection three of four medium sized goldfish have disappeared. Then I noticed the gold fish scales on the rim of the pond I hope you enjoyed your lunch, hawk 
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Aug 21, 2022 17:54
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That's gorgeous Mine is only 5x6 and plant cover is lacking, new, additional plants arrived yesterday but they're still soaking in my quarantine tub Pond is only 24" deep on a good day. We're expecting rain so it's 5+ inches more shallow this weekend What plants are the big green bushy ones, those look like awesome cover
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Aug 21, 2022 22:00
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I can't find any concrete examples of true anerobic plants, but according to a bunch of hand wavey stuff, some swamp plants (couldn't find any concrete examples) can sometimes be partially anerobic, but otherwise seems to be exceedingly rare
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Aug 22, 2022 01:18
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Saw two goldfish swimming today, so I guess the hawk only brutally murdered two fish, not three; one fish is just much better at hiding from predators, than the one that thinks a power cord is good cover
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Aug 22, 2022 23:33
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Yeah of note, I had two "fancy" decorative fantail goldfish, which are designed/bred for aquarium (indoor) use, and I had two Shubunkin style* goldfish that were specifically bred for being viewed from above in a pond (outdoor) Unsuprisingly, the fat, wobbly, slow fancy fantails got eaten, the lithe, long, fast pond-specific-bred fish both survived Like if you put two  goons and two olympic marathon runners  at everest basecamp, who would likely die of exposure* not my pond, my fish are about half that size, but general idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFTc_9h2es Hadlock fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Aug 23, 2022 |
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Aug 23, 2022 02:28
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double trick question hello basecamp why are you tying your shoes this bear is gonna eat us i just have to outrun youlater wears s warm comfy winter clothes
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Aug 23, 2022 02:55
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I'm actually in the midst of a power outage right now. I ordered a solar powered pond aerator with AAx2 battery backup, after reading things earlier this week, just deployed it. Probably overkill for the surface area and bioload+ plants but after reading about that better safe than sorry  Bulky Bartokomous posted:OMG, that's my worst nightmare. So sorry. We live in hurricane country now, I have the generator in the shed, waiting on some parts for the breaker panel to finish the install Right now hurricane season has been the quietest it's been in 30 years so harbor freight is running fire sales to dump their excess generator stock, you can get a whisper quiet inverter generator 3600 watts for well under $999 right now, that'll run all your aquarium stuff + fridge + microwave no problem
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Aug 24, 2022 18:49
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Power came on long enough for the pond pump to cycle the whole pond probably 2 times, power went back out. Very happy with my solar powered air pump with battery backup so far. Also bought a USB powered one I can run off a battery bank or laptop. Probably overkill for so few fish in so many gallons but the alternative sounds awful Edit: also a third goldfish has appeared from the brick labrynth! So I guess I only lost just the one
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Aug 24, 2022 23:16
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Do uv filters work for saltwater aquariums? I have a UV stage in my pond pump and there's so little biofilm on my pond liner, and the water is so clear I'm concerned my snails will starve to death
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Aug 28, 2022 18:08
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I am a new pond owner/keeper but your algae doesn't look outrageous to me. If the algae was 18" long I would be more concerned. The algae is just absorbing excess nutrients in the water. That looks like I would expect the shallow end of a natural pond to look in warm weather Ponds have a lot more (20x or more usually) volume so algae growing to it's mature size isn't really a problem like it would be in a 30 gallon aquarium as the fish can just swim around it
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Aug 29, 2022 18:06
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Baronjutter posted:If you want any pond tips let me know. I got an extremely respected local "pond guy" to consult and I'd have been hosed without him if I just followed what youtube said. I had a whole well researched plan and product list and he took one look, told me most of the products were garbage that just pays youtubers to promote and then told me what I actually needed to keep the pond healthy. Would love to see a sample list of products he recommended. I'm happy with my Amazon stuff so far but only been using it a couple of months
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Aug 29, 2022 18:07
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I put water lettuce + water hyacinth in my 450 gallon (1700 liter?) pond/outdoor tank while it cycled, that poo poo ate all the excess nutrients right up, my If you don't have a major mosquito problem, to jump start the tank cycling process, I'd suggest setting a bowl/bucket outside near your pond area, throw a handful (or two!) of local grass, tree leaves, dirt, rocks plus a gallon or two of water in there, let it naturally collect/grow the local bacteria/algae/microbes. A day or two after you fill your pond (when the chlorine goes away), pour your "fermented" bucket of pond slop into your nice clean pond to inoculate it. The local dirt, rocks, leaves etc are going to fall into the pond anyways, might as well let the critters growing on that stuff establish themselves and duke it out now Hadlock fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Aug 29, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 21:11
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I put some christmas moss in the pond, seems to be thriving. Came super densely packed, glued it down to some bricks and a week later seems to be absolutely thriving. I ordered some java moss and it came thinly spread on some 5x5 stainless mesh and just kind of blew away over the course of two weeks, although it looks like it's rehomed a lot of itself on some other crap in another corner of the pond Mildly concerned java moss + christmas moss will not survive the winter, I don't think it gets into the 30s for more than a couple days a month but the winters here it can stay in the mid 40s for weeks Was hoping the christmas moss vendor sold willow moss, which I guess is really popular in the UK as it's cold hardy, but they don't. Any suggestions for a willow moss vendor on the US east coast? I wanted to put some in now, so it can establish ahead of the fall
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Sep 6, 2022 18:28
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 This is Edit: my mystery snails have rapidly grown, they're like golf ballI sized, guess with a 7.0 I can safely add another cuttlefish bone without worrying about skyrocketing the ph Hadlock fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Sep 7, 2022 |
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Sep 7, 2022 00:52
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Stoca Zola posted:I’m looking at rice fish too, medaka seem very suitable for unheated ponds as Seriously Fish has them listed as temperate to sub-tropical fish. They prefer it cooler overall so I think they’d do well in my bigger pond once that’s done, I think the smaller one will get too hot in summer. Daisy’s rice fish seem more tropical and better suited as an aquarium fish, I quite like their red fins and I wonder if they would do well with my mix of small rasboras. Still too cold and shipping too unreliable here to order any new fish in so I’m waiting until spring for milder temperatures. But to be fair, rice fish would probably be fine, it’s not like there’s frosts here. I think they don’t mind a bit of seasonal warmth either, a natural cycle of warm and cool isn’t as much of a problem as too warm all the time. So I ordered 10 of these guys at the beginning of august https://medakafarm.com/products/medaka-miyuki-large Due to heat waves + travel stuff they finally arrived, they are super cool, I have the black "golden" killifish, the pink rosy red minnows and now these guys which are kind of a baby blue. They just look like blue rosy reds to me. I had a few die in transit so ordering another 5 + the replacements, to arrive later this month hopefully. It's hard to describe but they have a blueish iridescent tint to them, whereas the rosy reds are just kind of an opaque pink color Photo from their website (pretty accurate)  And then from my pond 
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Sep 10, 2022 05:08
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It's been an unusually light hurricane season this year, harbor freight keeps sending me 10% off coupons for generators, I think they're way overstocked right now https://www.harborfreight.com/2000-watt-super-quiet-inverter-generator-with-co-secure-technology-59135.html This one is $625, it'll run your fridge + tv + all the lights in your house + aquarium stuff as long as you can keep gas in it. You have to plug it into the house and start it, so it's not automatic though Alternately they make USB powered air stones that you can hook up to a UPS that ought to run for a couple hours no problem
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Sep 15, 2022 17:23
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I am a city adult presently, I just live in the flyover/3rd world country part of the usa now, and have enough of a back yard/storage space to house a generator So think of a house like an RV, you can go to the national park and yes you can plug it in and everything will magically work With a house though, you're wired into the Mains Power. It goes through a power meter that gets read by the power company, and behind that you have a Main Shut Off Switch and after that is your breaker panel. This switch is always on/open in a house, because, why would it not be? You have a fridge, HVAC etc and sometimes you stay up until 4am  in theory* shock/kill the lineman trying to fix your power. Also you'd be trying to power the entire neighborhood, which... would not work very well with your hellcat 2000w Of FuryWith a generator you need one of two things 1. A "lockout device" which won't let you turn on the generator breaker switches without turning off the Main Shut Off Switch. This is a silly $50 sheet of metal and trivial to install if you're at all handy 2. An automated lockout device that will detect the power is out, automatically flip off the Main Shut Off Switch, and sends a relay signal to your generator to start, these are ~$500 and cost another $1000-2000 to install *I don't think there has ever been a recorded death, your five nearest neighbor's lights + refrigerators would consume the power, but safety first, because technically you could kill the guy if the problem was in front of your house, also it's highly illegal not to use a lockout device edit: so that is the expen$ive part of the generator thing more edit: But yeah I have a $50 lockout panel, my generator has both 120v and 240v so via a $30 cable it connects to a special $45 generator receptacle, runs through $50 worth of interior housing electrical cable to the breaker box and then into a $35, 30A 240v breaker, which connects to both "legs" of the breaker panel which provides both 120v and 240v you can run your 120v light bulbs and your 240v electric dryer off a 7000w ( $900) generator. The power coming in to your house is 240v, the breaker panel splits it into 2x 120v Hadlock fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Sep 15, 2022 |
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Sep 15, 2022 18:40
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Hadlock posted:
So amazingly, like three hours after I posted this like, and I am not joking 100 utility workers showed up on my block and replaced a bunch of power poles on my block, including the one that services my house in particular. Shut down power to my house. Had I done a bad thing and run by my generator without the shut off device, it would have been sending 30 amps of 240v to the pole they were working on Of course they are all super well trained and they treat all the wires as live, before they get started all the wires get covered in giant orange pool noodle looking things, and their truck is covered in a bunch of stickers talking about rule of 3 different points of grounding, etc, ...but humans still make mistakes, and pretty sure every jury in America would convict you guilty for frying a line man
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Sep 16, 2022 17:26
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:But this would be if you are going to pump power into you whole house with a shutoff to keep it from going out into the grid, correct? I'm thinking the option of just running an extension cord to each tank from outside sounds easier, assuming I'm not losing heat in the process. Yeah you can put your generator in your back yard, and usually they have 2-4 120v outlets. The fridge is a pretty heavy power user so you'd need to buy a dedicated $100 heavy duty (large gauge) extension cable for that, and then if you're very careful/selective (consult an electrician) run a second extension cable with a power strip and then run your tank + a cell phone charger off the second one. On the back of every power strip it explicitly says "NOT PLUG INTO AN EXTENSION CORD" because it can overheat if you get anywhere near the 15A limit and will cause a fire. Running 3-4 amps likely would, I'm not even gonna say it for liability reasons, just consult an electrician. Some poor old lady dies every year because the space heater in her house was run from an extension cord at the end of a power strip that ran under a rug overheated and caught fire while she was sleeping Two 500w pumps and a 200w heater will eat as much electricity as a space heater set on high It's very safe to run a 30a 240v cable from the generator to your house through a breaker/special plug, everything was designed and certified to work correctly and there's no risk of fire because all the cabling in your house is adequately sized for the task
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Sep 16, 2022 17:38
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Things you could (probably*) safely run off a generator + 100' extension cord A dozen USB powered air stones + 2 USB powered aquarium pumps + 80w worth of led lighting. That should come out to Under 100w total which even a two prong lamp cord wouldn't sweat. In theory your reef tank should be capable of surviving a long weekend without power with that setup, even though it wouldn't be super happy about it Each USB powered thing is about 0.02 amps @ 120v so you could run a bunch of USB powered stuff before hitting 1 amp. 80w of lighting is about 0.6 amp. I wouldn't go over 1 amp on an extension cord, if your power is out chances are conditions are bad enough that the fire department probably isn't going to be responding right away, especially if they find out it was you that caused an electrical fire that set your house on fire All this is a moot point though because it's like $150 to install the plug and lock out switch and do it the right way and not need a calculator to  hope you're not gonna burn your house down*Being extremely conservative because I do not want to burn your house down TL;DR unapproved electrical improvements will catch your house on fire and you will die But generators are cool and good
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Sep 16, 2022 19:52
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Yeah Anker and others make all sorts of "battery generators" from like $100 all the way up to $3500 A $600 "Anker 545 power house" is 778 watt hours with a max of 500w continuous output because reasons So if your two medium size reef tanks each have 1/4hp (480gph?) that's 2 x 200w so you've already hit 80% of the max output. Probably have to turn off the heater which is probably another 100w. With just the two x 200w pumps, 400w, take the battery capacity, 778 = 1.9 hours run time. When it's out you have to go find a power source to recharge (like solar) Compare to gas generator, which will do 2,000 watts continuous, for about 6 hours on two gallons of gas (more like 12+ hours running 400w), and you can pump 12-18 gallons of gas out of your cars gas tank, or buy 1-5 gallon gas cans at any hardware store Of course if you turn off the big pumps/filters and switch to tiny air stones and USB powered pumps you can probably go 1-3 days on that Anker 545. And the Anker doesn't need an oil change annually Laptops, cell phones and other solid state electronics sip power, the problem is 120v aquarium gear is doing the literal physics definition of work so burns a lot of energy moving water around with electric motors
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Sep 16, 2022 20:43
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 06:41 |
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So in addition to my remaining 3 medium goldfish I have the 12 golden killifish, ~8 rosy reds and 7 platinum blue rice fish The goldfish are easily 10x the mass of the next largest fish, they just kind of do their own thing The killifish chilling in the top right corner of the pond One killifish has defected to join the rosy red tribe, apparently, has gone full native The rice fish aren't really schooling together. On my left half of the "pond" is the pump with the main outlet shooting towards the viewing area, this creates a current/stream. Almost always there's 2-3 rice fish hanging out there, looking for a snack, the others are in different parts of the pond at different depths. One rice fish likes to hang out with the killifish Apparently the rice fish have started spawning. I had three big happy tufts of Christmas moss on top of three bricks near the center of the pond, just below the surface 3-6" for about two months. Within three weeks now suddenly someone (presumably goldfish) have basically scraped the moss from the brick. My guess is some fish spawn ended up in there Very surprised, the golden killifish seem to be the strongest schooling fish in the pond. When I first added them they tended to roam around more independently
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Sep 19, 2022 06:37
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