IM 100 EXT with control board build

[insideout308]

Ok got the tank up and running. Filled with water and testing the roller fleece.
Water flowing into the roller filter is quite loud. Audible even when cabinet doors are shut. The sound is caused by the water creating a mini waterfall as it cascades via the side rectangular openings into the filter. For now I stuffed some foam pieces to completely silence it. I went ahead and placed an order for the silencer pieces. Hopefully it solves the sound issue. Other than the sound I think the roller filter works.
https://www.fijicube.com/cdn/shop/products/ARF-20Silencer_A_1080x.png?v=1676870928

I have the rfs-23 with the klir di-4 roller mat and what helped with that noisy waterfall effect was setting my water height higher to 10-11" for my first chamber so the water doesn't have to drop as far. May not be a thing with the rfs-39 but mine was still noisy going from the skimmer/refugium chamber to return chamber if the water levels were too far apart. I set the water levels in each chamber to step down roughly 1-1.5" in water level to help with that now the sump is silent.

I'll be following this closely for the roller mat really wish I knew this one fits in the rfs sumps before I bought the klir di-4. It works great but I'm burning through the tiny roll it uses roughly every 2 weeks and at $16 a roll if this Fiji cube one can last a month or two it'll be worth switching for me.

 

[nickng]

I have the rfs-23 with the klir di-4 roller mat and what helped with that noisy waterfall effect was setting my water height higher to 10-11" for my first chamber so the water doesn't have to drop as far. May not be a thing with the rfs-39 but mine was still noisy going from the skimmer/refugium chamber to return chamber if the water levels were too far apart. I set the water levels in each chamber to step down roughly 1-1.5" in water level to help with that now the sump is silent.

I'll be following this closely for the roller mat really wish I knew this one fits in the rfs sumps before I bought the klir di-4. It works great but I'm burning through the tiny roll it uses roughly every 2 weeks and at $16 a roll if this Fiji cube one can last a month or two it'll be worth switching for me.

thanks for sharing your experience. I tried the same ie raising the water level in the sump to the max ie 11 inches for exactly the same reasons. What I found was that I had to flip the float switch holder in order to raise the height of the switch. After doing that the sound of water flowing into the filter is reduced. At upto 20% power setting on the varios 8 return pump, the filter is completely silent. The sound starts above 20% power and continues to increase a little until the return pump reaches 40%. After that it gets a lot louder. I hope that the silencer plates will quiet things down such that the filter is totally silent at 40% power setting for the return pump

 

[nickng]

Darn it! I must be jinxed, karma for not doing my own plumbing this time round! The main drainpipe leaked after running the tank for a day. This time the leak is happening at the bulkhead of the main drain attached to the overflow box. I unscrewed the bulkhead and it turns out it's because the replacement drain pipe is just a little shorter in reach ie about 0.5 inch than my original drain. This causes uneven clamping force on the seals of the bulkhead causing one side of the oring & flat seal to be pinched and opens up a small gap to allow a tiny drip.
Will be doing a bit of DIY/hack to fix this annoying issue. I am going to cut the two drain pipes I have now and use a union or 1 inch slip coupler to fix this for good!

 

[nickng]

Some pictures showing the problem with the replacement pipe

 

[nickng]

ok question for anyone who’s looking at this thread. What’s the neatest way to fix this leak without cutting the pipe. Anyone used JB water weld on pvc pipes?, use self fusing silicone tape? Used Weldon 810 epoxy?

 

[nickng]

Or cut a pvc ring and slip it over the leaking area and glue it in with Oatley PVC glue? An idea I got from a product called “leak b gone”

 

[nickng]

Ok, so used some diluted pvc glue mix in some pvc shavings and forced it into the gap and after it dried wrapped some self fusing silicone tape.

 

[nickng]

Installed the silencer plates to the Fiji cube filter. There’s still water sound at 30% setting for the various 8 pump

 

[nickng]

At this point, I think the only way to get this filter fleece to run absolutely silent is to have a hose attachment to feed the water directly into the circular side opening of the filter fleece. I’ll see if I can mock something up.

 

[nickng]

Anyway since I am pretty happy with the filter working with my DIY extensions, I'm confident enough to post the drawings.
Measurements are metric because I sent them to an acrylic cutter that preferred metric measurements.

Added cutouts for clarity.

 

[nickng]

Btw I had to set the water height in the 1st chamber of the RFS39 to 11 inches to quiet down the cascading water sound. The silencer plates helped cut the sound down to something that is inaudible at 6 feet away with the cabinets closed. But the varios 8 can only work at 30 to 40% setting, any higher the water flowing into the filter can be heard.

 

[nickng]

A little update regarding the roller filter. I’ve now tested the filter with different flow settings from low to high by slowly increasing my return pump setting from 10 to 100%. The results are surprising.

At the lower end of the return pump flow from 10 to 20% setting, the filter is absolutely silent.

Above 25% pump setting water flow starts to be audible and sound increases gradually. The sound is hardly audible when standing 6-8 feet from the tank with cabinet doors shut.

From 40% to 60% the sound of water gets much louder. Easily hear gurgling sound even at a distance of 8 feet away.

Around 65% gurgling sound goes away intermittently.

And at 70% pump setting water flow thru the filter is nearly silent, only a very faint sound. Totally silent/inaudible when standing in front of tank with cabinet doors closed.

As the pump speed pushes past the 70% setting to 100% the water flow becomes totally silent. No gurgling… absolute silence. In fact the humming sound of the varios 8 pump is the loudest sound!

 

[nickng]

I now have the return set to 70% to minimize the humming sound of the return pump while maintaining a completely silent flow thru the filter roller.
So happy with the way things turned out.

 

[nickng]

Minor update, after 3-4 days running the filter fleece, it seems to be pulling out particulates. The float valve works flawlessly on the filter. I increased the float valve height by about 1/4 inch to delay the filter fleece from using the roll too fast and also let the fleece get a bit darker.

 

[nickng]

Added a 3/4 inch pipe to help apply some tension and keep the fleece taut.

 

[nickng]

Also reused the splash plate that came with the RFS sump to slow down the flow. This serves 2 purpose.
(1) It stops all splashing and salt splashes and allow a more gentle flow into the filter basket
(2) I can put a sponge or filter floss ahead of the splash guard to trap copepods and amphiphods and some large particulates so the fleece doesn’t clog up quickly. Any copepods or amphipods trapped or living in the filter floss/sponge can be rinsed out and returned to the tank/refugium

 

[nickng]

Chanced upon a piece of live pukani or maybe Marshall island rock. Rock was in a fishless vat for many months prior. Placed directly into tank with a reef art branching rock. Plan is to use the reef rock as a shelf piece to place coral frags on.

 

[nickng]

Tank update, dumped 4 bottles of copepods about 3weeks ago. Added a harlequin tusk 2weeks ago July 6th and a pair of clown fish July 21st with a lime green/purplish long tentacle anemone

 

[nickng]

Roller fleece working ok. I will probably get 2 months out of the roll

 

[nickng]

just a quick update, the filter roll lasted exactly 2 months. Also I found out the klir4 filter controller works well with the motor on the Fiji cube fleece filter. One draw back to the Fiji filter is that the motor is enclosed in an acrylic that’s glued shut. Wish they didn’t do that and made the motor more accessible and easily replaced.