Optimizing the heath stack set-up
Steven and I worked on this:
- Upon arrival:
- algae was not flowing.
- flow had stopped in all trays except the top tray (H2T2 ‘amb par hist. from T2’) because the hosing moved into a position preventing gravity flow.
- Fixing algae problem:
- replaced the masterflex C-flex tubing with the mastflex norprene on the peristaltic pump because the norprene is more resistant to heat and will hold up if the pump ever runs dry, where the C-flex will burn up (Matt mentioned the algae tank ran dry for a couple hours on Sat. Apr 27).
- the algae was being pumped through was a series of many pieces of various sized tubing coupled together. To optimize this, we swapped out as much as we could with continuous tubing to eliminate clog points.
- we removing the drippers from the ends of the tubing going into the header tanks to prevent clogs
- We added a T connector to split the feed into the two header tanks. At one point, one tank was getting more algae than the other, but we tried to level everything out to have even distribution.
- We left with everything flowing relatively evenly
- Fixing the flow problem:
- we replaced the plumbing with 1/2 inch tubing and secured the tubing into place with zipties
- We set up the cameras to be able to montior the flow of the heath stack and the feed.