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Post by moulton712 on Feb 28, 2014 0:20:20 GMT -5
Not bad. I've learned over the years i like the big gun style soldering guns. And the hotter the better. Then I melt the solder and just tap it to the board or wires I'm working with. If I'm doing a board i use a little flux. I tend to like the silver bearing or flux core solder. I've soldered wires on car ecu's to do remote starts and some tuning stuff. Give me a call next time I can help. I have a shop down the street from me.
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Post by Pokahpolice on Feb 28, 2014 8:56:17 GMT -5
Not bad. I've learned over the years i like the big gun style soldering guns. And the hotter the better. Then I melt the solder and just tap it to the board or wires I'm working with. If I'm doing a board i use a little flux. I tend to like the silver bearing or flux core solder. I've soldered wires on car ecu's to do remote starts and some tuning stuff. Give me a call next time I can help. I have a shop down the street from me. I have both the big gun and the smaller one. The pic in this is deceiving the actual board is about 1/4 the size of the pic and these solder joints are tiny. Each driver is only and inch long. I tried the large gun and it was just too big. If you look at the board you can see that I started with the two screw terminals and the soldering gets progressively better. The only issue I had was in the bottom right. You can see that the board got a little hot there. I screwed up and ended up with too much solder and successfully joint two of the terminals together. After messing with if for a while I just cleaned the tip of the large gun and was able to get all the solder off and start over. |
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Post by gotareef on Feb 28, 2014 9:25:40 GMT -5
with fluxcore (electrical solder)if you get the gun to hot it will eat the tip of the gun I have a few soldering guns and a couple temp controllers for them. (having a glass studio at my disposal has its perks  glass/saws/tools...) |
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Post by Pokahpolice on Mar 2, 2014 18:17:45 GMT -5
with fluxcore (electrical solder)if you get the gun to hot it will eat the tip of the gun I have a few soldering guns and a couple temp controllers for them. (having a glass studio at my disposal has its perks glass/saws/tools...) Funny you mentioned that. I burned thru one of the tips while I was doing this. Thought it was just because I got it too hot. |
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Post by Pokahpolice on Mar 2, 2014 18:23:59 GMT -5
Did a little work on the tank today. I wasn't happy with the skimmer I was using and decided to put the big Coralife that I had on. Overkill but what isn't on this tank? I also hooked up GFO and Carbon reactor. LOL...One tablespoon of Carbon and two GFO. Front view  The nice thing about a little tank is I can pull it away from the wall when I want to work on things. Here is what it looks like from the rear  |
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Post by Pokahpolice on Mar 2, 2014 18:27:45 GMT -5
One good thing about all the oversized equipment is that it adds to the total volume of water making my nano a bit easier to keep stable.
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Post by jasonandsarah on Mar 3, 2014 10:55:57 GMT -5
I love that you have all this big equipment on your tank. A lot of the same stuff I have on my 75g w/40g sump
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Post by Pokahpolice on Mar 3, 2014 15:08:29 GMT -5
I'm just a little worried about pulling too much out. I don;t want to strip the tank of the essentials
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Post by jasonandsarah on Mar 3, 2014 19:40:29 GMT -5
I normally wouldn't say this but maybe shut your skimmer off for a little while each day? Or maybe 2 nights a week? Just at night?
I'm sure you'll be dosing cal, mag and dkh? What are you going to dose?
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Post by Pokahpolice on Mar 3, 2014 20:28:41 GMT -5
I'll probably end up running the skimmer 6-8 hours a day. I've read some that there are some benefits to this anyway but I certainly can;t run that skimmer 24/7.
I'm going to build a dosing unit eventually but that will be down the road. I'll keep up with most of it thru water changes. I can do a 20% water change in one 5 gallon bucket so even if I need to do two a week it will be a 10 minute process. I think a lot of people underestimate your frequent water changes and try to compensate by dosing. Once I get a lot of corals I'll need to start dosing to keep up with demand but I don't think that will be for a while.
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Post by jasonandsarah on Mar 4, 2014 8:07:23 GMT -5
Yeah you have a smaller tank so it's probably way easier to maintain you levels with just water changes.
Until you get a full tank of sps then they'll be eating it up daily! Lol
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Post by Pokahpolice on Mar 4, 2014 16:05:42 GMT -5
Finally did the aquascaping today. I've had this idea to build something similar to a tree as the center piece. Step one, lay out what I have and pick out the few pieces I'll actually use.  Step two, secure the base rock to the egg crate.  Next, I needed to drill a hole in the large branch to secure it to the base with a few zip ties.  Here I'm supporting each side with more rock so I could remove the zip ties and allow everything to harden.  And here is the set up in the tank.     I'm pretty happy with center piece but I think I may shift it to the right hand side of the tank which will open up some room to build another structure. We'll see. I'm not completely satisfied with it yet. |
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Post by jasonandsarah on Mar 12, 2014 11:25:33 GMT -5
Saw this on Boston reefers society thought pokah and foggman could possibly be interested? They going to have a meeting with a guest speaker inn how to build an arundo controller. I guess they're gonna actually build one? Or take one apart? Not positive but worth a look. www.bostonreefers.org/forums/showthread.php?136802 |
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Post by foggman on Mar 12, 2014 11:52:03 GMT -5
Wow thank you for that link, looks like I'll be buying an arduino, I'm going to have to start searching for the best price
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Post by Pokahpolice on Mar 18, 2014 14:16:05 GMT -5
Updated photo of the tank. I have a little life so far.  |
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glass/saws/tools...)
