Marc's fish room build

[Fundulopanchax76]

You use technology of future to build your fishroom ! You raise fish keeping support in the next level !

[Jools]

Having some experience of this from an IT perspective, the other thing to do is run a test about once every six months, annually at least. Agreed, automatic load switching is imperative because, unlike zombie attack, bad weather outages can happen when you're not at home.

In my fishroom, I found that some filters did not restart on restoration of power after an outage, so this would help avoid that.

This might do the trick?

Jools

[MarcW]

Thanks for the link Jools something like that looks like it's worth a try, if it works a very good price too. I'll take a closer look at them and buy one to test out.

Agreed, my main concern is something happening when I'm not at home, I'll need to stick a note in my calendar to remind me to test it every so often too.

[MarcW]

So, thanks to Jools I've been investigating relays, automatic transfer switches, and reading a lot about solar and marine power systems!

From the research I've done, the cheap automatic switches on ebay/amazon seem to rely on a motor/servo to turn a lever, that in turn flicks off one breaker and opens another. The breakers are much like you would have in a fuse box/consumer unit at home. So although in principle that should work, it's far from ideal, as the breakers aren't designed to be used as a switch and could prematurely fail, there is also a slim chance that the motor/servo mechanism performing the switching could leave both supplies on or off, or just fail completely.

Given the investment and attachment to my fish, I decided to get a seemingly more advanced solution and bought one of these: https://www.victronenergy.com/transfer-switches/filax-2 it seems to do everything I want, once it arrives I'll let you know how it works and take a few pictures of the installation.

Thanks for setting me off in the right direction Jools!

As a side note, there are more local power cuts tonight although not impacting us, I suspect due to the snow melt and rain overflowing a small stream which has a few small sub stations along it. Once I have this switch installed I'm sure all the power issues will disappear forever!

[kvnbyl]

too bad you are not in the states, there is a company called Tripp Lite that makes 120 volt inverters (someone else might be interested)that keep the batteries charged and then automatically switch over when the power goes out and then when it comes back on the go into charge mode, top the batteries up and wait for the next time. when you add up the cost of fish and then the sentimental value it's not such a bad investment. I bought two deep cycle marine batteries and they can keep a 60 watt pump going for 36 (haven't gone past that i'm happy to say) our outages tend to be in the summer so heat is not an issue. (one advantage of living in les etats unis i guess). bet you could find the same there, maybe even a computer UPS.

[kvnbyl]

yeah, i posted this already, just had surgery and the pain meds are fuzzing things up :)

[Lycosid]

Hi Mark,
I think the device you bought will probably work better than fine, but I wanted to point out that transistors will also solve this problem. You want a transistor that is "off" (does not allow current through) when the biasing voltage is on (i.e., there is power in the house) and switches to "on" when the power drops, allowing current to flow from the battery to the fish room supplies.

If you have issues with the device you got, or if someone else is looking for something, I'd imagine that there's a pre-built transistor-based switcher out there.

[MarcW]

Thanks for everyone's responses, kvnbyl, I did find something like you describe available here, but as I already had the inverter and charger I thought I'd just try out the stand alone switch first. Sometime in future I'd consider moving to an all in one device, they did seem to be really good.

Lycosid, I believe the device I have gone for works on a similar principle, admittedly much more expensive than a transistor and a few other components, but my electrical knowledge has faded since college and I wanted to go for something which would just work out of the box. With a quick search I couldn't find something like you describe, I might have a look later on and see what I can find.

[MarcW]

Just feeding the fish tonight and caught a glimpse of one of the Jaguars. It has grown significantly in the short time I've had them, probably twice the length and about four times the weight! They also, unfortunately seem to be more shy as they have grown.

[MarcW]

I have now installed the power transfer switch. There are a few pictures below.

I have tested it and it seems to perform well so far, there is no interruption in power when switching between the mains (which I cut off at the fused spur into my water room) and the battery/inverter system, then once mains power is restored, it is checked for stability and power switches back over to mains after 30 seconds.

Now I need to run a few tests to see how the batteries cope with the inverter being in standby constantly, it draws up to 0.8 amps when in standby/no load, the charger delivers up to 3.5 amps although this is likely only early in the charging cycle, later in the cycle the voltage ramps up and the amps drop, so it will be interesting to see where things settle, I'm hopeful that the batteries will remain 90 to 95% charged while the inverter is on standby. I then plan to turn off the inverter once a month or so to allow the batteries to fully charge.

[bekateen]

Keep the thread going Marc. I enjoy learning from your progress.

Cheers, Eric

[Jobro]

Yes keep it up.

I was so close to buying a Vectron Energy MultiPlus (Inverter+Charger+Auto/On/Off) before and might now just go for it. Had a devastating 8hours power outage some years ago and am still very afraid of it happening again.

[MarcW]

Thanks Eric, I'll keep things updated as they progress, I think the next major update will be after the CSG convention, I'm hoping to add a few more fish over that weekend !

Jobro, I was very close to buying that exact unit, the multiplus looks really good, but as I already had the charger and inverter, I thought I'd just get the transfer switch. Eventually I'd like to get the multiplus, I'll see how things go for now, if you do get one let me know how you find it.

[Ruud109]

Do you have any pictures of your L260's in your tanks Marc?

[MarcW]

The lights have just gone off, I'll try to remember to get some pictures tomorrow. Don't get too excited though, normally it's just tails sticking out of caves!

[MarcW]

@Ruud109

Here are some pictures of the

L260

in their tank, the small one at the back by the sponge filter is one from their most recent spawn about 4 months ago.

[MarcW]

While I was away recently my inverter purchased from amazon, managed to drain my batteries completely in just over a week, just from being in standby. The charger couldn't overcome the parasitic drain from the inverter.

As I need this to be reliable and protect the investment I've made in the fish, I've ordered a Victron multiplus inverter/charger/transfer switch (https://www.victronenergy.com/inverters ... lti-500-va).

The manufacturer and reseller have assured me I won't get the same issues from this unit. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly wrong with the devices that I have now, but I guess the way I have put them together isn't the way they are intended to be used!

It arrives tomorrow, when I get some time to set it up I'll add some pictures. They'll also be pictures soon of the fish I'm picking up this weekend when I'm at the CSG convention.

[HenryCyday]

Thanks for sharing It will be really interesting to see the progression of the fish room youre building and the all plans you have, and how you do things, is there insulation behind the wood panels on the walls? Im only just getting prepared to start mine, clearing out the room, then painting it, then building all the racks. I started a new job at an LFS last week, and they are clearing the shop of some of their unwanted tanks, so far i have 3 3Г—1,5Г—1 and a 4Г—1Г—1, and obviously other tanks at home, more to follow, its seems the job came at the right time, also with an opportunity to learn even more and gain experience , I will obviously have a display tank also. Have you any particular fish in mind yet.

Good luck

[MarcW]

Hi Henry,

Welcome to Planet Catfish!

The wooden (ply) walls you see is a small room I built in the back of my garage to store and produce RO water, my battery backup system is also in there. It's a studwork wall with 75mm/3inches of foil covered foam board insulation, similar to Celotex.

In the fish room itself I use the same insulation in the walls, under the concrete slab floor and in the ceiling is 100mm or 4 inches of the same foil backed foam insulation. The walls and ceiling in the fish are plasterboard (or sheet rock depending on where you are from) over the insulation painted with a mould resistant wipe clean paint. Although as I run a dehumidifier in there it's actually much lower humidity than anywhere else in the house!

Good luck with your fish room, do as much research as you can before you start spending money, it really helped me to avoid some mistakes I surely would have made if I hadn't done the research!

The fish I have currently are listed in My Cats, you can see it if you click on my username I believe.

There will be some more after this weekend, I'll add pictures of them next week!

[MarcW]

Thought I'd leave a picture of some of the fish coming home from the CSG convention with me!

[Jools]

Oooft!

Jools

[MarcW]

It took a while, 6 pm to 11:30 pm! But the fish were all put into their new homes on Sunday night, a few pictures for you all below, as you can imagine, I was focused on getting the fish acclimated so the pictures won't win any awards, but will hopefully give you an idea of whats now in the fish room, there were some other fish brought home, but these are most of the catfish.

Just a few boxes to sort through

Pair of

Hypancistrus inspector

Group of eleven

Entomocorus gameroi

Ten young

Corydoras parallelus

Six

Acestridium dichromum

, which are housed with some fascinating Ammocryptocharax elegans

[MarcW]

Now the main event, eight

L095

they range from about 26 to 30 cm TL.

[MarcW]

Plus a couple more:

Ten

Otocinclus cocama

Three

Sturisoma festivum

Five small

Panaqolus sp(l397)

, which I haven't been able to get a decent picture of yet, they disappeared into the crevaces in the bogwood!

Hopefully in the next few months they will all settle in and be eating well, then I can begin a few breeding attempts.

Jools, I also got ten cherry shrimp to graze on the mattenfilters, hopefully it goes well, they multiply, and I can put a few in each tank.

[Iamfish]

Awesome builds, thank's for sharing the journey with us. Amazing new pickups I love those l095s.

[MarcW]

So I've had the first spawn in my fish room!

Only had the fish since Sunday night, put a spawning mop in last night and this morning there were rainbow fish eggs!

Not particularly impressive but nice to see some eggs!

[MarcW]

I have my new power backup installed.

Although I'm having an issue with the charger built into the device, I connected my PC to the unit and programmed the charging stages to match the ampage and voltages recommended by the battery manufacturer. However immediately after turning the device on I heard bubbling in the batteries, so turned the charger off a few seconds later. I'll contact the place I got the Victron multi from in the morning as they are closed at weekends. Given my last charger was only capable of 3.5amps but the battery manufacturer suggested 12.5amps when charging I suspect reducing the ampage of charging will be the way to go. I also suspect that the charger treats the batteries as if they are empty when first connected, even though they are fully charged, I hope this isn't the case, it would be disappointing for a relatively expensive device.

[kvnbyl]

If it's like the units i have used the charger should sense what level the battery (ies) is at and charge accordingly.
Having to program the charger is new to me, but hey, why shouldn't it connect to a pc, everything else does.
Might have something to do with the batteries, the ones i used were marine deep cycle ($325 a pop, good for 500 cycles) but i suspect not
When my inverter has has been used for anywhere from 2 to 24 hours, so when it goes from producing 120v ac back to charge, the built in charger and fan howl for 15 min to an hour and then gradually winds down until the batteries are back up to full charge.
I've never heard about having to set the charge stage but maybe things are different over there
If you have the option I would try to switch to an automatic charger, one that can sense the level of the batteries, charge accordingly and then float to keep the batteries charged up
Be really careful!
Batteries are nothing to fool around with the acid is very strong and batteries can explode if something is really wrong (i would guess you know this but i had to put it in anyway)
Good Luck

[MarcW]

Thanks for the feedback.

The company I purchased it from have the configuration file I sent them, pictures of the setup, the technical specifications of the batteries, and said it all looks fine. They are getting a second opinion from the manufacturer at the moment.

The batteries I'm using are Yuasa REC50-12I, which are deep cycle, good quality batteries as far as I can make out. I do have a smart charger which works fine, but having this all in one device eliminates a parasitic load from the separate inverter I was using, which the smart charger couldn't overcome.

Hopefully there is a simple mistake in the configuration and an easy fix! Yes, everything is currently disconnected as i don't want the batteries overheating or exploding!

[pointpleco]

Now the main event, eight

L095

they range from about 26 to 30 cm TL.

L095_1.jpg
L095_2.jpg
L095_3.jpg
L095_4.jpg

Wow !!! mate that's an amazing setup. And those L095's are so nice.
Great effort with everything.

Macrae