90gal tank upgrade nearing completion

I've been working on finishing up my 56 to 90gal upgrade. Finally got the rest of the equipment in. Got the stand painted black inside as well. Still haven't made the doors, they will be next as I've run out of other things to do.

Upgrades:
- Aquatictincs TX5 light
- PhosBan 150 Reactor
- AquaController Jr.
- 2 Hydor Koralia #3
- Octopus NW 150

I'm extremely satisifed with the Aquatictincs light. The output from it is amazing compared to the single reflector light I had before. Not to mention their customer support is excellent as well. I had posted about bulb choices on reefcentral and they private messaged me with some ideas even before I had purchased the fixture. The light came missing one screw and they sent it as well.

I ended up going with the following bulbs. They give off a slight hint of purple, which I think makes the tank pop.

UVL 10k AquaSun
ATI Blue Plus
UVL 75/25 14k
ATI Blue Plus
UVL 12k Actinic White

The Hydor's were put in two weeks ago and they are a vast improvement over the MaxiJets. They put out the flow in a nice wide stream. The mount nice as well with the suction / magnet mount combo.

I had debated buying the AquaController Jr over the ReefKeeper II and am glad I went with the AC Jr. I love the functionality you get from the custom scripting. Not to mention how accurate it regulates my temp. Only downside is that their AquaNotes software is a piece of crap. It hangs up on my WinXP box, isn't laid out well, and people state it doesn't even run on Vista. Good thing is you don't need the software as the unit is very easy to program by itself.

Heres some pictures of how it stands now. I'm hoping the PhosBan reactor will do its job and the small amount of hair algae I have growing in the overflow on on the hydor's will die off.

The skimmer surprised me for the price. Its working great and pulling out dark skimmate. I get about 1/2"-1" of skimmate a day. I've read alot of posts about people saying you need to mod this skimmer to make it work decently, and personally I think it works great out of the box.

Grins said:

Looking good. I'd like to hear more about the AquaController Jr

Click to expand...

To start with I was impressed at the size of the DC8. You can see from the above pictures I have it mounted on a 2x4.

You assign each outlet A01 through A08 in the case of the AC Jr with one DC8 and 3 letter word with a symbol. So for my lights I have A01, A02, A03 as LT1, LT2, LT3 respectively. The symbol is of a half sun with rays. My heater is HET on A05.

On the main screen on the AC Jr it uses the symbols assigned to show you the status of the device. They change from a sun with rays to a sun with rays to show a light on or off. Very nice as it allows you to identify which device is on. The ReefKeeper II just has channel numbers.

From there you use the interface to enter the control statements. They are worded in the syntax of IF CONDITION <>= THEN DEVICE STATE. Fairly simple. To control LT1, my actinic lights on I have the following

If Time > 10:00 Then LT1 ON
If Time > 22:00 Then LT1 OFF

The heater works about the same with

If Temp < 79.5 Then HET1 ON
If Temp > 80.0 Then HET1 OFF

Getting into more advanced functionality I wanted my lights to turn off if the temp went above 83. This just takes one line of code. If the temp rises above 83 they turn off and will turn back on when the temp goes below 83.

If Temp > 83.0 Then LT1 OFF

I find the coding gives me the ability to program almost any functionality I would want. With the ReefKeeper II they limit you to whats hard coded per their feature list. This comes into play when you want to do more advanced things.

For example the AC Jr you can program the Feed (Standy Modes). If you wanted certain pumps to turn off during feeding you would add a statement If FeedA ...... With the ReefKeeper all channels defined as sump, skimmer and some powerheads will turn off.

One area where the ReekKeeper II wins out is the following. If you plan to run a small load pump such as the minijet on the AC Jr DC8 if will not turn it off as the load is too small to be controlled by a triac. The ReefKeeper addresses this with 2 relay outlets and 6 traic outlets. To get around this issue on the AC Jr you either need to add a small load to that outlet light a night light, buy the expansion socket, or the DC4.

What I did was download both user manuals and read them through. This gave me a good feel. If you don't mind the programming for the AC Jr., like the expandability of being able to add a DC4 later and control 12 devices, its the way to go. If you a device where you just plug in the on / off times and temp off values then the ReefKeeper II is the way to go.

AC Jr manual
http://www.neptunesys.com/AquaControllerJr_3_2%2BSerial_web.pdf

ReefKeeper II manual
http://www.digitalaquatics.com/downloads/20060226_RK_2_Manual.pdf