DIY Cryptic Tube Fuge - Video Podcast Episode 88

[Rob]

Due to some unforeseen circumstances the start of the seahorse series will be delayed one more week, please bear with me on this..

This week i am presenting a video on building a DIY Tube Fuge, this video walks you through the process of building and putting in place a DIY Tube Fuge.
The video was done by Samuel Helms, its a concept project that was he researched put together.
I would like everyone to keep in mind this is a version 1.0. So if you see a better way of doing something, we kindly as that you help contribute to this project and post your suggestions here lets collaborate on this.

BE ADVISED
This video episode is almost 30 minutes long, and the file is over 100 MB. Downloads for the first few days of release will take a while.

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[Rob]

Updates to Project: ...

Listeners who have completed this Project:
Sgt Majors

[Seahorsedreams]

Greg, you broke their machine.

[Rob]

Greg, you broke their machine.

??

[Seahorsedreams]

I was telling saxman he broke the machine during recording.

[JustDavidP]

He he... Sam, I liked the video. I like the concept of your fuge too. I, as Rob stated, think it is a good idea to work to discuss some possible modificaitons to it. For what it's worth, it is the same principle that I use for my cryptic sump. Though, I used a dark, tupperware storage contaner.

First of all, a question. Rather than cutting the "half circles" or notched in the cap and the top of the pipe, could you use a hole saw, type of drill bit and make a more precise hole just below the cap rim? I'm a fan of waterproof unions. I would fear that if any algae or other matter reduced the flow out of the elbow, that it would leak at this union.

Also, I know they are hard to find, but they do make end caps with a flat surface if you wanted to make the unit stand. BUT..with that being said, if we looked to the elbow, used to return water to the system, I'm sure we could find a way to easily modify that to make it a "brace" of sorts, turning your unit into a "hang on tank" type.

Otherwise, it is this spirit of innovation and passion for the hobby that helps is to make leaps and bounds every day. Hats off to you my friend.

Dave

PS... gotta love yer sense of humor. I think we all, as hobbyists, have consumed far too much tank water in the siphoning process.. we are ALL crazy!

[JustDavidP]

Renee...

Other podcasts, video and/or audio are in the process of release.. there's a method to our madness

D

[Astrivian]

First of all, a question. Rather than cutting the "half circles" or notched in the cap and the top of the pipe, could you use a hole saw, type of drill bit and make a more precise hole just below the cap rim? I'm a fan of waterproof unions. I would fear that if any algae or other matter reduced the flow out of the elbow, that it would leak at this union.

Also, I know they are hard to find, but they do make end caps with a flat surface if you wanted to make the unit stand. BUT..with that being said, if we looked to the elbow, used to return water to the system, I'm sure we could find a way to easily modify that to make it a "brace" of sorts, turning your unit into a "hang on tank" type.

Yes to all The 45 bend i used is probably too large; there is just a small trickle of water coming out of it. So if you can drill a precise hole and fit unions into it, go for it. I did see those endcaps once, but was not able to find them again in time for the video. I wholeheartedly agree: they would make life much easier.

One other mod i had to make concerns the bubbles. If you notice from the end of the video, the fuge dumped a great deal of bubbles into the water as well. I just measured wrong, of course, and the 45 bend was too far off the surface of the tank water so it splashed around when it hit. I just put a small piece of 1/8" acrylic in the oven for a bit and bent it around the end of the 45, just to make it longer. That eliminated the bubbles. So the lesson here, extend that inlet so that it just touches the surface of the water, then no more bubbles.

[Astrivian]

I need numbers. So, i have some real data for you all regarding this device.

Nitrate levels before the tube fuge:
10 10 10 15 15 10 5 10 15 10 10 15 20 15 20 10

The fluctuation is due mostly to water changes. These numbers were taken about twice a week although sometimes i missed a date.

Nitrate levels after the tube fuge:
15 10 10 10 5 5 5 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

All tests were done using the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Nitrate test. The live rock used in the fuge was cured and sitting in a bucket in my basement for about 2 weeks. This explains why the nitrate numbers dropped so quickly. I did this for several reasons: first to quarantine the rock so hitchhikers did not invade my tank, and second, so i would not create a mini-cycle.

The color matching tests for nitrate, as well as any other color matching test, are not interval data (i.e. not truly numeric). The data is ordinal, so the standard parametric statistics are inappropriate (t-test, ANOVA, etc.) for these samples.

This is not a minor point. The power of the parametric tests drops precipitously if used on ordinal data such as these color matching cards. Therefore, it is imperative for us researchers to know what type of data we are gathering from our experiments. For data to be interval, all values between a given range should be possible in your measurements. So if you are measuring specific gravity between 1.000 and 1.030 you should be able to differentiate between 1.001 and 1.002 as well as 1.001001 and 1.001002. If you cannot, you likely have ordinal data. Ordinal data is ordered categories. Typically people think of something like grade level (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) as ordinal, which is certainly true. Color cards are without question ordinal. The test for nitrate, for example, measures 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40+ but nothing between this points. I cannot accurately read a value of 12, for example.

Devices such as a sensitive pH meter, a Lux meter, and other electronic readings can likely be considered interval, provided they can give many data points in the range of interest. Hydrometers and refractometers are ordinal, however, and t-tests should be avoided.

Thus, to analyze the data for the tube fuge I used a non-parametric test called the median test, which can handle ordinal data. This is a relatively powerful test, on par with the t-test and ANOVA (ARE = .64 v. t-test). Using the median test on the data above, resulted in a quite significant T score of 2.2571 and an approximate p-value of 0.012. For those who have no idea what i am talking about, this means that there is less than a 1.2% chance that the drop in nitrate was due to random chance, suggesting the tube fuge does indeed work!

[Astrivian]

Oh, one last thing i forgot to mention. The arabian dottyback and the firefish are not in the same tank together! The video of the dottyback was from a while ago......yes, meaning i took some video of my fish for my personal amusement then edited it in to this video

[graveyardworm]

Just Curious, how long is it taking people to download this thing. I'm getting on the order of 3-4 hours.

[JustDavidP]

Eeeesh.. I can't be of any help here, I saw/downloaded it from another source, days ago...

I'm guessing it depends on your ISP. I'm at work (we happened to be involved in the creation of the internet) and have a rock solid connection.

Dave

[graveyardworm]

I have a high speed connection, so maybe its just my outdated computer.

[JustDavidP]

It may also be that when I downloaded for review.. it wasn't made "public" and now, with multiple connections to the download, you could be sharing the pipe with a gazillion others (okay...a gazillion is just wishful on the part of the TR Staff).

D

[Rob]

as noted in the original post
"BE ADVISED
This video episode is almost 30 minutes long, and the file is over 100 MB. Downloads for the first few days of release will take a while"

there is a cap as too how much data my servers can send out at once, but the nature of a podcast feed as soon as i release it everyone starts downloading it at once. so there are literally hundreds (maybe more than a thousand) people all trying to get this huge video..

if you sit tight it will work it self out, after the first few days things will calm down...

you should have been here when i released the plumbing video, it took almost a full week for the traffic to relax on the server.. it was pegged the entire time..

[JustDavidP]

Nyeah nyeah... I got mine down to 80M. Did you get my mail Rob?

[Rob]

good job, no i wont get that till later this afternoon when i get home

[Paintbug]

i may try a modified version of this in my sump/wetdry that holds nothing but my skimmer. i like cheap DIY projects!! do you think it would do better with a clear tube and a small light to allow for some macroalgaes to grow? it seems to be working with the results posted though! nice project!

[Astrivian]

i may try a modified version of this in my sump/wetdry that holds nothing but my skimmer. i like cheap DIY projects!! do you think it would do better with a clear tube and a small light to allow for some macroalgaes to grow? it seems to be working with the results posted though! nice project!

Ahh yes, i was wondering if someone would ask that. My answer: sure why not. A clear acrylic or PVC pipe would be good for this too, albeit a bit more expensive, and i think a cheap HO or T5 light would work. One thing you could do if you want to leave the basic design the same and add some light is wrap tin foil around the side of the tube facing the tank. The foil would reflect some light back into the tube and help the algae grow (macro i assume).

If you go with macroalgae in the tube, you might want to not add any LR. Try some chaetomorpha floating in the middle. I am thinking the inside of the tube will eventually be covered in microalgae (slime) and rob the macro of light. If you left only macro in there, cleaning the inside of the tube would be relatively easy provided you can fit your hand in. If there were LR in the tube, you might have to take it all out every time you needed to clean the plastic.

[keyozoxmfc]

right when he gets to talking about using the water jug and not his real tank....my screen just goes white and silent...the time is still moving..but everything else stops...anyone else get this?

[Paintbug]

right when he gets to talking about using the water jug and not his real tank....my screen just goes white and silent...the time is still moving..but everything else stops...anyone else get this?

not me. the first attempt to download did get cut off for me, but the second download worked fine. you may want to download it again.

[keyozoxmfc]

uhh
ok...i havent had to do that before so lemmi figure it out

[Rob]

you are getting the video very close to release day, its possible you didnt get the whole thing.
the server has been at 100% network utilization since i released it yesterday and has not let up yet..

[Astrivian]

you are getting the video very close to release day, its possible you didnt get the whole thing.
the server has been at 100% network utilization since i released it yesterday and has not let up yet..

Yea i think that is what's going on there. I downloaded it once and it got cut off at one point too. After i did it a second time it worked okay.

[jl7854]

Has making these Podcasts available through bittorrent been considered. It could ease the server load.