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Profilux first steps

- Posted in Cichlids by

The Profilux is mine \o/
So, instead of choosing a Profilux 4 for my two aquariums, I finally bought two Profilux Mini WiFi: it's cheaper and I won't have cables running all over my living room.
Profilux Mini WiFi

For the moment, I have installed only one and here are my first impressions:

  • The network configuration of the Profilux Mini is quite painful. Yes, I, the man who juggles with IP and subnets, suffered. The Android application forgot to be user friendly and only those who paid for their box will go through with it. Veni, vidi, vici, passus sum.
  • Of course, the pH probe has to be calibrated, and reference liquids are not provided. I still haven't figured out how to display the measurement history but I'm still looking, I hope I'm less stupid than the average person.
  • The measurement status display portal is accessible via http on the local server of the Profilux Mini and on the myGHL portal.
    Profilux Mini WiFi dashboard
    But in both cases ... no REST API of course. So I'll have to parse the web page like a pig, and the naughty one weighs 13MB . Who said optimization?
  • Let's say that the pH probe (after manual calibration) is much more accurate than the 10€ one on Amazon. So my water finally has a pH of 8.13 instead of the 8.8 previously measured. Not very serious, it's in the minimum but still acceptable values for a Tanganyika biotope.

    So now I'm going to play with my friends curl, grep and awk to find my hidden pH and temperature values in my web page.
    And only when it's working I'll be able to insert all this inside my beautiful Banana Pi dashboard.
    As we say in French j'ai du pain sur la planche, which could be translated into I have a lot of work to do.
    Stay healthy, stay happy :)

Lowtech aquarium?

- Posted in Shrimps by

Remember Diana Louise Walstad's promise? A low-tech aquarium, without filters or water changes. I tried it and although the plants grew very well and only a few shrimps were running around, the nitrate levels were hopelessly too high for them.
So I decided to put a filter in this little aquarium.
But shrimps don't like filters, at least not the suction they cause. Basically, the newborns are sucked in and killed by the classic filters... So the shrimp specialists all use air filters with a big foam. But... air filters mean air pumps mean noise pollution, and I try to keep the sound pollution in my living room to a minimum, so I want to avoid at all cost the sound of a membrane vibrating like crazy.
So, first step, find a foam filter that is not air powered, but directly equipped with a water pump, so that it is quiet by design. Not trivial, but you can find one without having to fiddle with an air filter by adding a water pump. I chose this model, it works very well (as long as we forget to talk about the electric plug which is not in the French form).
The second step is to have a better nitrate treatment than the one achieved by the foams alone: this is where this Seachem product comes into play (I didn't trust the provided filtering material). It's expensive but it works devilishly well.
So here I am with the couple :
Anti nitrates weapon
Verdict: in a few days, my nitrate level dropped to almost zero, all with zero decibels.
Be safe.