So.... another update. All the up and down metal work with rails thing I did a few months ago and had to stop as I was being feeble about the cold, finally got finished today. And it was the part I was being most mysterious about.
The up and down aspect is to raise the outflow pipe at night to give better aeration and disperse any co2. In the morning before the co2 kicks in it will drop down again. I have this linked to a timer and relay which switches on a linear actuator and reverses polarity to draw it up and down.
The other bit works on a similar principle; a linear actuator with relays and timers. But this actuator goes horizontally and switches on one second approx every hour, once it reaches the end it then retracts. This is linked to the outflow. The idea is that the outflow pipe will move from left to right in small increments throughout the day and night.
Luckily all the working out I did has meant it worked perfectly first time.
The idea for this came when I was about 7 years old in 1990, my dad set up a tank with pumps on each end of the tank. My dad told me the pumps were there to circulate the water. I thought when he turned it all on the pumps would move left and right to circulate the water. It just seemed like an obvious thing to do. but they didn't
Fast forward to now and the whole need for good flow in a planted aquarium thing made me think of this again.
The set up I have here moves the outflow by 90degrees left and right, I’m quite confident this will eliminate near enough all dead spots in the tank. More importantly it saves having any extra bits in the tank to achieve this.
Part of my aim with this tank is to minimalise the hell out of this set up.
These two pipes should therefore:
Circulate the water thoroughly and better than a static outflow
Automatically raise at night to remove the need to do this manually or add an air stone for night time aeration
Incorporates a shrimp guard inside the inflow and is not easily visible
Incorporates a CO2 drop checker as the cap in the inflow
The pipework all enters in to the tank stand, this keeps lines straight, no curvy silicone hoses hanging down (I really hate that) and no chance of brown algae pipework on display.
I’m quite pleased with all this. It’s been a lot of planning and trying lots of different ideas to get to this stage.
I would be interested to hear anyones thoughts on this idea.
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The photos don’t show the full extent of the left and right business, I’ll do a video as some point to show it all working.