Fish's new tank project

[muck]

Originally Posted by Fish

No Ryan, Heather does not sew. Why, did you see I had the material and want something made up? That's funny 'cause you are the person that came to mind when I put it up.... whats that mean???

- Chad

I thought for sure she must sew. Or is it you that is a master of the Singer?
Why else would you buy your underwear by the roll.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by muck

I thought for sure she must sew. Or is it you that is a master of the Singer?
Why else would you buy your underwear by the roll.

LOL

[Fish]

Well, I have almost everything I need except for a 1" union and maybe a little extra pvc pipe.
During the warm weather I put another coat of paint on the stand. I also drilled holes in the wooden tops and painted them with a marine resistant paint to try and preserve them.









Once I have all the plumbing pieces I am going to sand them down and paint them with krylon fusion.
There is this little voice of reason in my head and is telling me that I shouldn't have chosen black and the color of my stand... I am usually pretty anal about keeping things clean - but I've never had to account for every single drop of spilled water before.


- Chad

[AndyL]

Gotta comment for a second...

Watch that plumbing for your closed loop - hard plumbing like that without any flex/vibration isolation in the plumbing - can lead to tank breakage. I snapped 2 tanks with plumbing that wasn't dissimilar to that. (and the harmonic vibrations don't help with keeping noise down)

Andy

[Fish]

Andy are you talking about the photos? The plumbing you see in the first pic is one of my return pipes and they will just hang over the top of the tank.

I do realize that I need to brace the pipe coming from the closed loop so that all that weight isn't sitting on the bulkhead. Because the glass is 1/2" thick, I'm not going to break the tank unless I really reefed on it (fortunately I have gotten in the habit of overbuilding tanks whenever there are bulkheads involved)... but a crack in that bulkhead would be equally catastrophic and would drain the tank down 2/3 of the way.
Thanks,

- Chad

[AndyL]

That's exactly what I'm talking about... Even with 1/2" glass I'd be concerned - with such a short length of plumbing 'feeding' the pump - there's going to be a significant transfer of vibes/resonance from the pump to the bulkhead (thus to the glass). Temporarily plumb it in - fill the tank and run it - put your hand on the pane that feeds, and on the pump... You'll feel the vibration through both.

When you've got a couple feet (like often seen on big tanks) between the bulkhead and pump - that few feet of pvc acts as a vibration isolator; but in your setup there's nothing really there to isolate - you've got less than 6" which isn't enough 'free space' to have the same effect... I did the same as you have on my 7g bf even with careful plumbing of the closed loop - the vibration of the mag 3 alone was enough to snap the back glass corner to corner.

A small hunk of flex between the 90 and the union or between the union and the pump would go a long way.

Just my .02, not trying to criticize, just pointing out something I've learned in the past.

[Delphinus]

Western Pump is a good place to get the spa flex tubing. I second Andy's comments, always use short lengths of spa flex or even just vinyl tubing between bulkhead and pump, even if the vibrations aren't enough to crack glass, the flex pipes will absorb the vibrations and lessen that "hum" sound you'll get.