New fish room

[Lloyd]

Very cool steve. Really well done.

Awesome job Steve, it looks so serene. And the electrical work is first class. I believe a few cold one's have been well earned!

On a side note where did you buy your substrate. I went to Bunnings at Morayfield the other day and for some reason the play sand is now brown, I would like white.

Also if you get a chance can you list the Fronnies you have, all look so beautiful.

thanks guys. Stoney, the sand is from the local landscapers. if you go there they usually have 2 different types. if you put them side by side dry, one is only slightly finer and more white, thats the one you want. once under water, you can really tell the difference.

the current fronnies im keeping are:
WC Kigoma
WC Kipili
WC Kitumba
WC Moba
WC Mpimbwe
WC Kavala
i have one spare tank so looking to add another colony in the not to distant future

Nice list of Fronnies there mate.

Thanks for the heads up with the sand. I tried my local landscaper and they didn't have any. Which one did you use? I may try Steve Jones or Nuway.....

thankyou

i went to jacksons landscaping at bracken ridge. they had a decent supply of it the last time i was there.

I will hit them up on the weekend. Thanks again Steve.

no problem at all, just dont go buying all the basalt rock they just got in, i need to finish scaping my last two 8fts hahaha

Scuba Steve wrote:

thanks damo if you can believe it, i woke up around 1am last night and my alarm clock was reset. checked with the neighbor this morning and sure enough we had lost power during the night. going by the voltage in the batteries, we lost power for around 2 hours, but it was good to see the changeover switch did its job flawlessly and kept the fish room running off the inverter. i've put just a normal battery charger on the batteries tonight to top them back up, but so happy it all worked so well.

Just trying to the understand the electrics in detail. Guessing that lights and small pump are run from 12V DC and that AC from the inverter is only user for backup purposes to run fish room during mains outage?

BTW - one hell of an amazing fish room. Well done!!

jcumpstay wrote:

Scuba Steve wrote:

thanks damo if you can believe it, i woke up around 1am last night and my alarm clock was reset. checked with the neighbor this morning and sure enough we had lost power during the night. going by the voltage in the batteries, we lost power for around 2 hours, but it was good to see the changeover switch did its job flawlessly and kept the fish room running off the inverter. i've put just a normal battery charger on the batteries tonight to top them back up, but so happy it all worked so well.

Just trying to the understand the electrics in detail. Guessing that lights and small pump are run from 12V DC and that AC from the inverter is only user for backup purposes to run fish room during mains outage?

BTW - one hell of an amazing fish room. Well done!!

hey bud, everything runs off ac. it starts from the solar which is setup in the room next to the fishroom. from there, there is 2 main power supplies off the inverter. the first supply runs to a power board in the control board in the fishroom. all the lights, pump, auto water changes and auto top up runs from the 12v transformers. this is a pretty inefficient way to do it but with such a low draw current from the lights etc, there is no real loss and it keeps all the wiring behind the control board which kept costs down. the second supply then runs into the changeover switch. how this switch works is when the mains power (input 1) either goes out or has a brown out, its senses it and switches over to the solar (input 2) within 10 milliseconds. once the mains power has been restored, the switch then monitors it for 30 seconds to make sure its stable, and switches it back.

hope this helps mate and let me know if you want to know any more.

Steve, somehow the word "impressive" is inadequate to describe what you have done. Incredible project Steve!!!