From Reef to Nature Aquarium a journey

[Ed Wiser]

I have been on the forum for a while now discussing and enjoying the posts of members.
I have been developing my planted side of the hobby the last year do to my wife's love of plants.
This means I can have more aquariums.🙂 I am a retired maintenance man I specialized in Computer control and product testing equipment maintenance. This always fit with my aquarium hobby as I had to test lighting for color temp change in food inspection. I had to test ph probes to make sure they were all working and since we used a lot of pumps from peristaltic to high-pressure pumps. I was able to learn about the equipment I used at home on my aquariums. I have had aquariums since I was 10 years old now pushing 66 years old it been a life long hobby. During my time in the hobby, I started keeping Saltwater in the early 80's I was a moderator on Fishnet on the computer network called Compuserve . I meet many liked minded hobbyists there who in later years became authors such as Julian Sprung and so many others who now run aquarium companies. I was an original board member of MASNA and I still have an interest there.
So this brings us to my current aquariums.
This past September I started gathering equipment together for a 120P aquarium for our living room.

This will be my last big tank build so with my free time I am able to get things right.


Here is the state of one side of my two-car garage in all that stuff is GHL lights an ADA 120p aquarium an two 120p stands custom made by Aquarium Design Group.
In the coming weeks, as the temperature warms up, I will be moving the stand and aquarium into the living room and will be posting my progress at putting all this stuff together. Lots of equipment to rework and set up.Moving RO/DI system and Auto water change system around in the garage as I plan to be rasing berghia nudibranchs to learn more about aiptasia a pest in the saltwater hobby.

One of the first things I had to do was paint the inside of the stand from black to white. I thne wanted to add a sliding shelf for my ADA 1200 Power filter.
I ordered sliding shelf brackets from an online cabinet part supplier.

I then installed the slides on a piece of scrape shelf board from my Local Home Depot.

I then installed the shelf to the inside of the cabinet.

The next Step is to drill holes to mount the light stands. It should be warm this weekend to do this task.

 

[Jayefc1]

Cant see the pics but it sounds amazing the 120p is such a beautiful tank

 

[Andrew T]

Same. I’d like to see the pics!

 

[Ed Wiser]

Fixed the links.

 

[Andrew T]

Ed, do you have the GHL Mitras LED or the strip LED?

 

[Ed Wiser]

I have the Mitras model. I will be going in depth on setting up and adjust the color temperature and Par.
I have the whole GHL system with 6 dosers. I haven’t use the Mitras light yet so I wanted to try it on this new tank. An my approved of the look of it. As with all things IT MUST LOOK GOOD IN HER LIVING ROOM. This is an important point that many guys forget to bring into to their purchase decisions on their equipment. My wife doesn’t like junky equipment in HER living room. So all equipment is Vetted thru her. Another one is that she doesn’t like me wasting money on equipment that breaks after a year. So you will see that this build is high standard only. It’s my hobby and we spend a ton of time looking at the Aqurium so it’s to enjoy.

 

[Ed Wiser]

Today’s project was helping a fellow hobbyist.

In today’s world users buy and sell equipment without thinking about how they have their equipment setup.
So a person buys these nice doser used and can not get it to work. So I had him send it to me to fix.
Took me a couple of minutes to get into the doser.
An here is what I found the doser was still connected to a cloud account.

So I reset the doser to its default settings. All is good now.

No red lights.
An the WiFi hotspot shows up now so that he can use it with the phone app.

Final task was updating the firmware to the current version as the unit hadn’t been updated for 4 years. An could work with the latest version of the phone app. Love helping people out with this stuff. Did this for a living so not big problem for me and it helps a hobbyist get a nice doser back to correct working condition.

 

[Deano3]

Very nice of you to do that ed, got to help each other out these days and 120p are perfect size and hopefully in future i can upgrade to one when got a bit more room.

Looking forward to this one
Thanks for sharing.
Dean

Sent from my SM-G970F using Tapatalk

 

[Ed Wiser]

Today is water change day and filter clean day for the ADA 150.

 

[Ed Wiser]

This aquarium uses a KASA 6 plug WiFi power strip. I have set up a a group of equipment to turn of during a water change.

 

[Ed Wiser]

Cleaning the inside on the ADA 150

 

[Ed Wiser]

Clean the filter once a month to clean things working. I can always tell when it’s time to clean it.

 

[Ed Wiser]

I clean the shrimp guard so I get good flow thru the filter.



Cleaning Lilly pipes. My wife doesn’t like dirty ones so the are kept clean.
Love the ADA spring brushes. As the bristles are cut to the size of the pipes. Which lets the bristles work better at cleaning.

 

[Ed Wiser]

Clean the inside of the filter.

Add back the sponge cubes to the bottom of the filter.



Put back the media bag and the top screen with the supports up so that it doesn’t block the pump intake.



Filter ready to be put back on the aquarium.



Water change and filter cleaning done.

 

[Ady34]

I hate cleaning filters 😱 Nice breakdown.
Don’t suppose you could do a small video showing the flow of your es-150 in the tank could you?
No worries if it’s tricky, it’s not hugely important, more to satisfy my curiosity 😀
Cheerio,
Ady.

 

[14548]

When seeing your pics I wonder why Ada filters are so pricey?

 

[Ady34]

When seeing your pics I wonder why Ada filters are so pricey?

Built to last I guess, they’re all just buckets with pumps but some buckets and pumps are built better. Steel is more durable than plastic and the pump will be stronger. All the clips are metal too so less chance of breaking or fatigue.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

When seeing your pics I wonder why Ada filters are so pricey?

Three components would be my guess.

• ADA label
• <"Iwaki pump">
• Stainless steel vessel

cheers Darrel

 

[14548]

Hi all,Three components would be my guess.

• ADA label
• <"Iwaki pump">
• Stainless steel vessel

cheers Darrel

nice guess, I heard the iwaki pump was noisy on some models too...

 

[Ed Wiser]

The pump is the biggest cost.

https://www.aquasabi.com/ADA-Replacement-pump-for-ES-600

And the welds on Amazon the seams of the housing are flawless. As someone who has done metal fabrication for 40 years. I appreciate quality workmanship.
Can could not count the number of canisters that have broken on me in the past 56 years. Especially on a weekend when the LFS was closed or out of apart
I always keep several sets on the various Lilly pipes that I use. Because not LFS in my town even knows what they are.
The noise on a 150es depends on the cabinet it is in. As the noise is from the wood. When you lift the pump so it is not on a resonance surface there is no noise. Aquariums are noisy anyways. I am always amazed at how much a tank noise makes After taking a tank down to change it up.
I am so attuned to the noise of filters that. I can tell if there is a problem with the filter way before it really acts up.
That from years of listening to equipment as a maintenance man.
As I have said this is my main hobby and
As I get older I really enjoy being able to buy nice things that I couldn’t raising a family. As my wife really gets bad when I buy something an it breaks on me in a short period of time.