love my wavebox. 3 years in my 90gal, almost 2 in my 180 :biggrin:

I'm plugging my ears and doing the "lalala" thing about the reduction in tank life though. My used tank has an unknown number of years on it and I shudder at the thought of having to take it down in the next 5 or so years (although the 15-20 years tank life talk was encouraging, I thought it was much less).

If it helps I can assure you silicone is not effected by mechanical cyclic loading so it's immune to fatigue type failures in most cases such as aquariums. The only fatigue issues with silicone are related more to electronics which have thermal cyclic loading. In addition even if fatigue failure was possible the amplitude from the cyclic loading is actually very small, the pressure from the wave is only fluctuating a few inches in comparison to the total pressure of 20+ or so, so it's not even close to something that would raise fatigue concerns anyway. Fatigue issues relate more from reverse cyclic loading where the load reverses direction created an a total amplitude greater than the actual static load (similar to why bolts are always preloaded).

The simple fact is fatigue failure is completely impossible from a wave box and it's a bunch of BS and like most stuff on the web is just spread by a bunch of people who know very little about the subject.

OK. I can breathe now.

There you go Brad stop you whining and get that wave box going :mrgreen: oh ya we need pictures of that thingy too. and try it with out the box i did for a bit with mine in the 150 and it worked pretty good. Its like a fat MP40:razz:

Including Tunze apparently! Maybe their warning is more to do with liabilities and a 'just in case' ?

I would imagine they're covering all their bases.

Yeap it's just politics

still could cause the stand to fatigue and fail:wink:

I think this would be the biggest contributor. Either failure, or shifting. My stand is pretty solid, so I think I'm good.

No, we can't breathe yet if you read what fishytime just had said.