I am in the planning stages of setting up a reef tank to go in the kitchen of a house I am renovating (that I shall be moving in to).
The tank will have a custom housing made by the kitchen unit manufacturer (www.cesar.it) (with steel tank stand custom fabricated elsewhere).
I would love to hear any ideas for this 6ft tank. What would you have? (sump size, reactors, best skimmer, automation)
Ideally I would like to find automation software (Dr Aquarium seems not very good) so that I can automatically monitor and log tank conditions (can you buy nitrite/nitrate probes?) I am toying with buying a DAQ board.
wow- i want this kitchen!! This brings cooking to a whole new level!! Maybe cooking and dishes would be fun all over again!!
Can't really answer any of your questions, but as far as a skimmer goes, I love my Euroreef.
The design looks totally fab! For someone who likes to cook, I would LOVE to have my tank in the kitchen. I'm sure you've already thought of this, but have you double-checked that the steel is treated so that it doesn't corrode?
If you're looking for a great tank programmer, I'd recommend IKS Aquastar. They're even having a special right now so that you can get the computer for free and just pay for the probes. You can control EVERYthing with it and I've spoken to many people that are very very satisfied with it. Check it out!
Some of the good skimmers that are available here in Europe (are you a first time reefer?) are Deltec, H&S skimmers (I have one of these and am very happy for my 550liter tank), and also the new BubbleKing (from Roayl-Exclusiv) seems to be the talk of the town here, although it's quite expensive. I'm thinking, though, about getting it for my new 1600liter. My LFS has bought a bunch on sale...
Hope this all helps!!
Good to have some more people from this side of the ocean! :-)
wow christi, that unit looks cool..
i have wanted one of those but havent been ready to throw thousands at the neptune controller.. where are the detials on the special, and where do i look to buy?
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Everything is in the planning stages at the moment...which is good fun.
I was going to have the frame powder coated.
The kitchen carcass and doors will be protected from moisture by extractor fans to outside (Hopefully automated). The halide heat will also hopefully reduced in this way.
The tank dimensions at the moment are looking like 72 x 24 x 24
Hey Rob - check out this link here. Unfortunately, and I'm not quite sure why, but the info for the rebate is only in German. If you want, I can translate some of the stuff for you.
I'm not sure if it's available or would work outside of Europe, but they have a contact page and they're pretty good at replying to questions. We're planning on getting this system with our new set up. You can even have alarms sent to your cell phone via SMS! Pretty cool....
I just searched on the dealer list, but they didn't offer anything for US. But, contact them and see...
I believe the deal is that you get the 360€ computer for a much smaller deposit. After 4 years, you would own it, but in the meantime get any updates that are necessary. I'll sit down and translate it tomorrow and post it to you guys.
Yes, you can get it in England..I'll find out for you.
They have all probes that you could want: osmolator, redox, pH, temp, conductivity, oxygen, and air pressure.
It also has timer functions, so you can program up to 32 timer functions.
It's got interval functions, day/night simulation, lunar-phase simulation. You can control up to 16 pumps and simulate pulsating wave and/or high/low tide. The current program functions were one of the winning features for us.
But, I'll try to get the deal translation to you guys tomorrow! Gotta go to bed....
Ha ha ha....that was pretty funny to read. At first I thought you'd actually found a link where it was in English and then I realized it was a little bit of gibberish.
Okay...so let's see if we can figure out how much it costs....
I'm going to list everything in Euro, just so I don't get too confused...
So, if you buy the IKS Aquastar or IKS Aquastar Midi, you would save 369 and 349€, respectively. For me, only the IKS Aquastar would come into question....
So, you basically get the controller for free. You can give the system back anytime without reason. You just buy the desired modules. The basis system will be given to you by IKS for 4 years, without the need to buy it. You pay a deposit (130 or 105€) and can enroll for Hotline-Support, Updates and Customer Service for 26€/year. After 4 years, the system belongs to you OR you can give it back to IKS and get your deposit back. You're not bound to anything, because you can give the system back to IKS at any time.
So, basically, you save the money that the controller costs. You still have to buy the individual modules and I assume that most people that actually invested in the modules probably wouldn't be giving the controller back after 4 years. I spoke with Morton (he won the tank of the month on RC last month) about his system. He's in Norway and has been really happy with the system. I know several other people as well that use this and have been really happy.
The modules need to be bought through your dealer...not directly through IKS.
I was thinking about controlling some Tunze streams or Waveboxes with the unit.
So, Rob, hope this helped. Just let me know if you have any more questions. I just wrote the people an email asking them about availability and functionality in the US and England, so hopefully I'll get an answer tomorrow!
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