you know tony. the whole gasket on the water side isn't nessasarly true, the gasket has to stay on the originaly intended side or you get leakage through the threds.. what I did when i put a bulkhead in backwards was leave the gasket on the outside then I put a smear of silicone on both sides of the glass and gasket. the silicone wasn't realy to seal it, but rather to prevent anything from getting lose. I did do a test befor the silicone was applied and gasket on the outside worked. if you look at it you'll see why. you have the two faces, the bulkhead flat, and the glass creating a perfect seal.. if you have the gasket on the nutside it gets twisted and deformed as you put the bulkhead in, and will leak a good chunk of the time as the threads are not sealed.

Steve

Try being a 21 year old buying plumbing at home depot with your 18 year old brother, I was accused twice of making a "Beer Bong" and once of making a "Beer Bomb" before I even left the store.

Silly old people the extra was for a regular bong... :lol::lol::lol:.

and I do just what Steve does, little dab oh silicone on both sides to make sure it's snug in place.
Levi

haha, the old guy in the victoria HD used to love when I came in to see what I was building this time.

Steve

Thanks Steve, good explanation or at least it makes sense to me when I stop to think about it. The gasket was definitely pretty unhappy under the threadnut. I'll try it again with the gasket on the outside.

I've never really liked threadnuts on the inside, they get caked up with feather dusters and calcium deposits and the whole bit and if/when you try to remove the bulkhead it's always harder than it has to be because of it. I'd rather keep the bulkhead with the threads on the outside but it might push the pipe out too far and push the skimmer out, 1" further out and that stupid effluent pipe won't reach unless I cut it and elongate it. Although I wonder if I could just make the skimmer stand a little higher and have the pipe clear under it and call it a day on that one.

Skimmer feed redux:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1596-0.jpg

Like my 3/4" to 1-1/4" union and a valve?? :lol: Man that took trips to Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Rona just to get the pieces. Had to use a 1-1/2" valve and 1-1/2" union because I couldn't find enough connectors to make 1-1/4" throughout work. Nobody had threaded-to-threaded reducing bushings and nobody had 1-1/4" close nippes so 1-1/2" it had to be, slip to thread reducing bushings. Oh well, other than it feels enormous for the size it could have been, at least it should be functional.

Where things are at now:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/image/a/d/...img_1597-0.jpg

Still lots of stuff on the catwalk but I'll get to cleaning that up later. The yellow 1/4" line was coming off my RO/DI reservoir so I could fill up the sump faster (the RO/DI was on and the reservoir was draining). Still took bloody forever to fill, but I did get it filled and turned the sump return pump on for the first time tonight.

So the good news there is even at full bore the wavebox does not cause the waves to slap up, against, or over the Eurobracing as I had been concerned about all along. HOLY CRAP! Did I understand that right? Something DIDN'T screw up??? Yikes, call it a day and FAST. So, pumps are currently off for the time being until I figure out what's next on the task list.

Interestingly, once the pump got turned on and the water level rose in the display tank, the amplitude of the wave diminished significantly. It seems it's well above the sweet spot of the wavebox. The wavebox itself cannot be raised because it's butted up against the Eurobracing so it could be that I'll never really have a big wave in the tank anyhow. Oh well, as long as I can get some kind of back and forth whoosh whoosh going in there, I will be happy, the actual height of the wave is more of a novelty anyhow to me. :)

Just as a footnote to other things that happened this week:

- The bike spokes idea appear to be working. I have a working powerhead again on the left side of the cube!

- Since I had nothing to lose on the broken needlewheel impeller anyhow for the Bubble Magus skimmer on the carpet tank, I broke off the remaining pieces of the needlewheel disk so all I had was the magnet shaft. Then I cut a little plastic circle out of some plastic I found, glued that to the impeller shaft using Weldon-16, and then cut out some circles from some leftover Enkamat I had lying around. I meshmod'd my BM100! Haha, woot! I have a working skimmer again on that tank. And after 1 day it seems to be kicking butt too. Well, it's certainly kicking butt over when it wasn't working at all, if nothing else.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Waves are kinda "meh" to me...I know I know..I must be weird. But I had a pretty good one going in the shop and all it did was stir up my fine sand....I mean, it was neat and all, but ReefCrest mode is my sweet lover. And I ended up turning down the vortech to about 60%...ah well.

Get rock in that beast already will ya!?

Whoooo Hoooo! A successful day with no mishaps!
Makes it all worth while eh Tony? One more day like that and you'll forget all about the bad stuff.
Not far off now my friend. :biggrin:

Wow, this is really coming along here now. I kind of snickered at your pump plumbing, but only because I have something that looks disturbingly similar on my skimmer too! I like the colour of the flex, the blue is very pretty.

Congrats on getting your wavebox to work for you!

The .. blue? Oh you mean the hose from the pump to the skimmer? That's not spaflex, that's some ribbed tubing that matches the 1-1/4" skimmer intake. The skimmer came with it, I don't know what it is or where Chin even got it from. Suppose I should ask him. Looks like vacuum hose to me, the last time I used something like that though it leaked like crazy no matter what I did with it. Hopefully this stuff doesn't.

In the picture the 2" pipe that leads to the Dart and the 1.5" pipe coming out of it is spaflex, as is the 8" section that leads to the first elbow on the skimmer feed. From a distance it looks the same as white PVC but if you see it close up you can see it's a spiral of soft white plastic PVC. It's not as flexible as clear vinyl (which you have to use hose barbs for) but it does have a fair bit of give and it just cements into regular PVC fittings using regular PVC cement. BTW at Western Pump you can get clear primer and clear cement for PVC - makes for much nicer and cleaner plumbing work than the usual purple and grey stuff. :)

Tony, I always thought you are supposed to use the Weld-On PVC 795 for flexible PVC hose rather than the PVC 711 for rigid PVC.

Wait! Wait! Wait! You mean there is such a thing as CLEAN plumbing? :lol: Does the clear stuff also burn your nose hairs and make you feel a bit light headed?

Oh yeahhhhhhhh. :lol:

Lance, my understanding is that the clear stuff is the required bonder because it has some flex/give to it, but the grey stuff will still bond it. I like to use the clear stuff even on rigid plumbing because of the clean look you get out of it (the purple primer makes such a mess of things). I dunno it's what I've always done, one of those things that "someone told it was fine" and I've believed it ever since. :lol:

Spilling the clear stuff wouldnt destroy m living room floor though where's the fun in that?!

Looking great man. Glad to hear the waves are working for you. You have the extension in there too?

ya Tony we will just take your word that the WAVES ARE FREAKING AWESOME, WAY TO GO TONY. NOW IM YELLING CAUSE I CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE THE DAM TANK WITH WAVES .ARUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH







&^**^&%&^**^$&$&*$^*$^&(^$&$^&* THAT IS ME YELLING AT YOU TONY.

NOW may we pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee see some more pictures..........:biggrin:

When I end up having to upgrade my tank to fit the growing school of tangs, I will probably be looking at a tank of the same dimensions. 72" x 30" x 30". I'd have to remove the door frame but if I have to do that, then it'll be worth it. What a huge thread Tony.

Anthony

I am glad that your wave box will work for you. When are you putting rock in that bad boy?

Hey Tony, can I come by to see the new setup. Please Please, pretty please?

Holy freaking balls Tony! Is that WATER in the sump? You got the ole H2O-shizzle in the display-nizzle too now or what cuz?

I am with Mike on this one, more nom nom nom

Yeah fo' whizzle! :lol:

Tinkered around with flow settings tonight, here's a bit of a preview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUJXrlsf9U4

The sump return comes out 4 nozzles placed along the Calfo manifold. 3 on the right pointing left, 1 on the left pointing down. The idea I had here was to create a vertical gyre that sweeps towards the overflow.

The two 6080's in the middle on Wavysea's sweeping left and right, at different speeds so that sometimes they're in sync and sometimes they're not.

Two waveboxes on the left.

Last but not least (and unfortunately not shown) there are 2 6100's positioned one left and pointing right and back, and the other one right and pointing left and forward - these are on the controller so alternating between 100% and 10% about once a minute.

The back room is a terrible clusterfrack of wires and I have my work cut out for me the next day or two getting that all cleaned up. Next up I need to get the heater on there and the Ranco and then I'm dumping salt and working on rocks!

Woo look at that wave!!! Thats awesome Tony, you are so close now!!!!!:mrgreen:

That is a great wave!

Thanks - it's interesting how the wave will sort of crest and peak depending on the interference with the other Tunzes, so there is a neat variation to the flow pattern. It's not chaotic though, like how it was when I had the 6100's on the Wavysea's and they were pulsing away (it was random but TOO chaotic - it was nothing like the flow patterns you'd expect to see on a reef). So I'm glad I was able to get these 6080's for the Waysea's, it's much better like this. (Thanks again Jay and Christy :) )

When I turn the sump return off the water level drops down to the sweet spot of the boxes and the wave gets to be more like 3" or 4". As impressive as that sounds though I don't think I'd want that for real in a tank like this one, maybe in a 8' or 10' tank and assuming the tank had actually been built to accommodate that kind of weight shifting. I should try to get a video of it like that just for the novelty of it though - maybe tonight.

So tonight's task will just be to tidy up the cabling and get the Ranco and heater up and running. After that it's salt, then rocks, then sand and then I guess it's cycling time! Man .. it's actually starting to feel close now.

On a side note I swapped out my old Mak4 for Steve's Mak4 with the broken impeller. Steve's impeller was definitely kaput, it was missing at least one fin and another was mostly broken off too, but the motor is super silent compared to mine. So an impeller swap from the two and away we go. The Mak4 at full open is WAY too much flow for the skimmer so it's throttled down considerably (the valve is more than half closed). For curiosity, I took out the watt meter and the Mak4 is pulling 138w at fully open and around 85w where I throttled it down to.

What's weird is I can't tell why my old Mak4 is so loud. It spins quite readily and when I power it off it continues to spin for some time as it winds down. So you'd think it's not a friction issue. It is however somewhere in the order of 8 to 10 years old (I think I set up my 72g bowfront in 2001? I can't remember anymore, and that's where that pump was used for a few years) so I guess I could just be expecting too much of it. I was half tempted to take it apart to see if I could grease a bearing or a shaft or something but I guess without an intact impeller it's not much use as anything other than a spare motor in the event that the other Mak4 has a problem down the road. I'm not sure if you can buy replacement impellers for Mak4's anymore and maybe it's not even worth it if the bearing on this has gone (but you'd think it wouldn't spin so nicely if it was a bearing? I dunno, I guess I don't know much about motors).

Anyhow I guess I need to get on with the task of sourcing out some sand. I had originally planned on going BB in this tank but now that there's water in it, the silicone work on the bottom is really noticeable and it's .. just brutal .. to look at. Not the nicest silicone work I've ever seen (nicer than anything I could do but.. that might not be saying too much. :lol:) So I think it needs to be covered up.

I'm thinking a mixture of a little Fiji pink, a little Bimini pink and a whole lot of plain white sugar sand. I dunno, what do people think of the pinker grains from Caribsea? I need to go look at the bags and see what I think in person but I do like the pictures.

http://www.caribsea.com/pages/produc...aragonite.html

(The Bimini pink seems to be only available in wet: http://www.caribsea.com/pages/products/aragalive.html )

You are CLOSE now it's gotta feel good. Glad to see another Ranco user...was it being used on your other tank or was it in storage?

I think the sugar sand is far too fine for a SPS tank but maybe that's just me. I like the Aragamax Select personally but might go a bit courser next time so I can really move some water.

I find the sand looks far different under water and under lights so the bags are even a touch misleading to me anyways. I know that doesn't help much but...

Oh and the blue ribbed tubing leaks like crazy at the hose barbs. I have two metals straps at each end cranked down as hard as I can and it's slowed it down some but not eliminated the leaking. It also collapses down under its own weight when full of water. So I have to find a different feed line from the pump to the skimmer. This ribbed stuff must be for low-flow low-pressure applications and not meant to be used for carrying a pump discharge (too much flow and/or pressure I guess).

hmmmm weird....normal flex hose then?

Storage - I bought two of them a couple years ago when one of my heater controllers let go (might have been a Won Bros brand? Can't remember.. and I guess it's not an important detail now anyhow) so I bought two off ebay. One is in use on my FW tank and this one has been waiting patiently...

That's a good point. I don't need anything too too fine for my own taste but for the sake of the wrasses and other fish who might like to bury themselves at night I don't want to go too big either. I'll check out Select too. The picture of it certainly looks promising.

Heh, no worries and it's a good point. I dunno I'm trying to imagine what sand with smattering of pink in it would look but I've found that what I imagine something will look like and what it will "actually" look like in reality seem to be not all that close together... Guess I'm gonna have to make some decisions and then just take a leap of faith. I can't imagine any choice will look "bad" though - it's just sand. (Well, maybe that painted gravel would look bad. We can eliminate that option right off the bat! :lol:)

I've got about 40lbs sand from the Bahamas that came with the order from Marco rocks...looked nice and tan when it was dry and is a blinding white atm in the tank...which I don't mind...only problem is it's super fine...mini sandstorms aaaaaalllll the time.

Maybe. The annoying thing is that the input to the skimmer is 1-1/4". To switch to anything else I'd need to buy a SCH80 union and thow away most of it and just use the one piece with a different size adapter. I could go this way and stick with 1" line since the pump puts out way more flow than needed anyhow but I was thinking if I ever replaced the Mak4 with something a little more miserly I may want the bigger tubing to restrict flow less. I guess I'm overthinking this, that's a problem that doesn't exist right now and I should only worry about if/when that day comes.

I'm going to look for some 1-1/4" vinyl tubing, if that's easy enough to get, then it's just a relatively easy swapout.

I imagine that should get better as the sand gets coated in bacteria but yeah I totally understand why people choose BB and just not have to worry about those things. I'm guessing the sandstorms will be terrible for me too for the first little while.

pretty sure they'd have it at home depot...in the plumbing/bath area methinks

I hope so. I know that they have 1-1/2" but I hate that stuff. It's enormous and unless you get the reinforced kind it doesn't keep its round cross section and so on. I should just move to 1" and replace both unions at the end and call it done. What's another $30 (or whatever) at this point ..:lol:

I really hate the vinyl stuff. I am using it only because there was none of the re-enforced stuff which stays round in stock. And all this because I wanted quick and dirty when I did my return pump swap which meant no pvc.

So Tony you're saying you trust your cube to a heater thermostat or what's in use there?

That's what she said...c'mon Brett, you're making it too easy (also what she said)

Bazinga?

You just 'she saided' what she previously said. I'm calling the shop up and asking to speak with the boss I think someone's slackin' today :mrgreen:

Ho! Ho!. We got water and waves! The home stretch is in sight now baby!

yes

and no Brett...I simply said that what YOU said was worthy of a "that's what she said"...and then after what I said was ALSO worthy of a "that's what she said"....holy eff

and I'm allowed to slack...because everyone else does here sometimes too.

Those waves are crazy! I love it. I like your wavy seas. You get some sice random current from them. I find with the one I built for my tank, and the 2 korillias on the wave program I am getting some very nice random flows happening and my 2 triggers love playing in them. You will be very happy with them once you get some livestock in there.

Missed this earlier, sorry - but yes just a basic Ebo or something in there currently. Sort of goes back to the whole "it wasn't supposed to be this long" thing in the first place - was only meant as a temporary thing (this tank also originally had a ... I forget the brand name, it wasn't Won Bros, for a heater controller but it was something similar, it failed and starting reading these weird alien symbols instead of numbers). Anyhow other thing though is that the heater in there is kind of small, if it got stuck-on my "hope" is that it doesn't have the ability to overheat the tank anyhow. Luckily between the room temp, the lights and the pumps it doesn't have much work to do anyhow. It's actually a pretty low tech tank. I just use a floating glass thermometer in the sump to measure temp. Every so often I'll go looking for it and have to peel off a layer of feather dusters to take a reading.