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Ralph's Corner -- an introduction

© Winston Vaughan Schoenfeld

The next few articles will be done by a guest writer, Peter Odell. Peter grew up in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale), California, where, in the seventies, he became a Journeyman plastics machinist and fabricator. He enlisted in the US Naval Submarine service as what they called a Nuke. He completed naval nuclear power school (nuclear theory fluid flow and heat transfer), naval nuclear power prototype training (hands on, land-based power plant training), and became an engineering laboratory technician. An engineering laboratory technician, or ELT, was responsible for reactor and steam plant water chemistry and the radiological controls for the reactor and related components. He was assigned duty on a fast attack submarine where he qualified not only as power plant operator but as an engineering laboratory technician. Here he spent quite a few years with not only steam plants and nuclear reactors but learned a great deal about making and purifying water (one basically had to know the fluid systems on the sub as if your life, and the lives of others, depended on it).

After the service, Peter went to work at a commercial nuclear power plant for a major utility company as a health physics technician. There, along with his duties of radiation protection, he furthered his knowledge about not only chemistry and radiological controls but of environmental controls and regulations. Peter eventually got into the computer end of the radiation protection business where he eventually headed up the computer systems for the department.

Peter now works as a consultant for companies who need UNIX systems, software and network help. He has a small business on the side where he designs and manufactures filtration systems and tanks for marine aquariums. Peter has simply put a life's worth of hands-on experience into a hobby. In the next few articles, Peter is going to try and pass some of his hard-earned knowledge along. These articles will come from the perspective of "Ralph," Peter's long-time clownfish. Unfortunately for him, he lives in a tank which has been subject to many an experiment. All of the filtration, lighting and wiring, etc. have been completely fabricated by Peter in order to better understand just what makes the aquarium tick. Ralph doesn't seem to mind though; he is well taken care of. He and his anemonae have been around for quite a while. The following articles will present some interesting phenomenon that a lot of us take for granted, as well as introduce some filtration concepts that Peter has used in developing his own filtration system that many of you may be interested in.

The copyright of the article Ralph's Corner -- an introduction in Aquariums is owned by Winston Vaughan Schoenfeld. Permission to republish Ralph's Corner -- an introduction in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.