First Reef Tank: Overkill Monitoring & Automation

[platinummonkey]

Howdy all! Finally posting my reef tank. I'm a SW engineer by day job at a major observability company, so naturally I've gone full throttle on every bit of monitoring and automation I can tinker with. More project work to come! This is my first saltwater tank and had only done freshwater prior before taking over a decade break. My kids wanted fish and showing them around they of course wanted a nemo

Main Tank:
36 gallon Aqueon bowfront as the display tank.
30 gallon Fiji Sump with Fiji fleece roller
CPR Aquatics CS90 HOB Overflow with Air Pump
Neptune Apex Pro with ORP, PH, Salinity probes
3 Neptune DOS heads (1 for AWC, 2 for dosing)
Bubble Magus Skimmer Curve 5
Helio PTC Smart Heater (2 200W elements)
Neptune COR15 return pump
Neptune Trident (1 slim 1 gallon waste container) - with Printed Reef housing
2 Neptune level sensors
4 Neptune MOS sensors (1 per storage bin, 1 in the return area, 1 as an overflow protection in the main display)
2 Sicce XStream Powerheads
1 Maxspect Gyre (it's periodic to sweep up detrius/uneaten food to get it down to the sump)
15W UV Sterilizer with Mighty-Jet pump
Neptune Auto Feeder
2 AI Prime 16 HD lights with flexible mounts
Custom built stand - it could hold the weight but I decided not to try and move the tank after-all.

AWC:
2 16 gallon fresh salt water - these are joined with a Y RO connector they just happened to fit my stand designs)
Waste plumbs straight into a sink waste line in another room behind that wall.

Stock:
- 2 Gladiator Clownfish
- 1 Purple Firefish
- 1 Tiger Watchman Goby
- 1 Lawnmower Blenny

Cuc:
- Lots of Snails
- 1 pincushion urchin
- 1 peppermint shrimp

Corals:
- several zoas
- 1 green star polyp
- 1 clove
- 1 toadstool
- 1 ricordia

Quarantine tank:
Innovative Marine NUVO 14g AIO
Mighty-Jet return pump
Nero 3 Powerhead
Helio PTC Smart Heater 100W
IM Fleece Roller
AI Prime 16 HD Light with flex arm
MiniQ Nano Internal Protein Skimmer - on an eletrical timer plug

Custom Stand:
This is just a typical 2x4 stand with 3/4 inch plywood.


Ongoing project deals with that mini-fridge - yes building a frozen food feeder, but also auto-doser for snow/aminos, and phyto

 

[platinummonkey]

Here is my custom integration to monitor data off the apex

Beakers arrived for the project, designing the pump mount and enclosure and soon this will be up and running!

 

[Stevorino]

yeah yeah yeah automation











then I see the programming

 

[platinummonkey]

Oh I’m having fun, some embedded rust work coming this way

 

[platinummonkey]

Making some progress https://github.com/reliablereefs/autofeeder/blob/main/src/main.rs

Device just arrived so I need to actually put the board onto the hardware and do some testing

 

[FUNGI]

Nice.....
but you have an error in line 316......

 

[FUNGI]

Made you look...!
LOL just kidding....nice stuff dude.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[Not_Erick]

Nice! Following to see the progress

 

[platinummonkey]

Prototype board, basic relays, some pots to tune the output voltage, esp32. The input voltage being 12V. Waiting on a buck converter down to 3.3V for the esp32. I’ll have to pick this back up next week, business trip, wife already wants this working haha

 

[platinummonkey]

I'm just making some progress. There will be a fair amount of calibration involved. Also need to ensure I can monitor this setup.

This is addressable over HTTP with a request like:

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'Accept: application/json' -d'{"name": "2", "spin_time": 3000, "wait_time": 1000, "pump_time": 2000}' autofeeder.local/dose

 

[platinummonkey]

With a pump too

 

[platinummonkey]

Calibration of DC pumps was quite a pain, such a pain that after prolonged tests I was getting some wonky variation in total fluids. So we're digging into stepper motors now.

Need to get this printed.