60g Cube

[Rjukan]

Yeah I used to do that when I was on good city water. Then one day they added chloramines to the water for some reason ( kill some bacteria or something), it was a bad time.

That's what I'm afraid of.. or if there is some water main construction somewhere upstream from me and they throw in something to help with the particulates or bacteria. Or even just the high sediment when that happens. At any rate, I needed to get my RODI back online and I had replacement filters for 3 of the stages on hand.. just needed the RO membrane.

 

[Rjukan]

1hr 13m to fill 5g bucket with RODI

 

[twentyleagues]

1hr 13m to fill 5g bucket with RODI

Whats your pressure?

 

[Rjukan]

Whats your pressure?

Spot on 70 psi
It's comparable to when I was running the unit back before I let everything go. I think I would set an alarm for 1:20

 

[Reign1]

I'm a cube stalker. Cubes are my favorite.

Things are starting to make a lot more sense now

 

[Rjukan]

On for plan B with the 7.5g..

My idea for the homemade bulkheads didn't work. It wouldn't create enough pressure or hold to keep the pipe in place, and I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to make it water tight. Sooo, I was searching last night and found some threaded male and female couplings that might work. Also ordered O rings to sandwich in there. I'm not happy with the inner diameter of them, and I wonder how much water they will actually be able to flow.
I'll find out sometime next week.

 

[twentyleagues]

Spot on 70 psi
It's comparable to when I was running the unit back before I let everything go. I think I would set an alarm for 1:20

I guess it just seemed slow. I figure in about 12 hrs little less I get 55g so thats about 2.2gph, also at 70psi. Mine is a 100gph/day so I guess that tracks.

 

[Rjukan]

Mine is also a 100gpd, but yeah.. judging by your numbers you're getting 4.6ish gallon an hour so pretty similar when you account for estimations. I actually ran a timer for this so I can set a good alarm going forward.

 

[twentyleagues]

Mine is also a 100gpd, but yeah.. judging by your numbers you're getting 4.6ish gallon an hour so pretty similar when you account for estimations. I actually ran a timer for this so I can set a good alarm going forward.

Yeah I didnt time it out exactly, and apparently I cant math anymore at all.....
I get home around 530 and I mixed a batch of salt water, Draining my ro res. It started to fill and in the morning between 6 and 7 it was full. The amount is also not exact as it had a little left in the 55g res.

Glad yours is back up and working how it used to! Lets get this tank back on the rails.

 

[Rjukan]

Yeah I didnt time it out exactly, and apparently I cant math anymore at all.....
I get home around 530 and I mixed a batch of salt water, Draining my ro res. It started to fill and in the morning between 6 and 7 it was full. The amount is also not exact as it had a little left in the 55g res.

Glad yours is back up and working how it used to! Lets get this tank back on the rails.

Haha that's bold to run it overnight! I've never kept SW reserves, and since getting things back on track, I'll keep a 5g bucket of SW ready for my water changes, since I'll mix a new one right after using the current one. Especially now that I know in a pinch I can use the tap water.
I'm really trying to get it back on the rails, so far it's paying off. Thanks for the words of encouragement!

 

[twentyleagues]

Haha that's bold to run it overnight! I've never kept SW reserves, and since getting things back on track, I'll keep a 5g bucket of SW ready for my water changes, since I'll mix a new one right after using the current one. Especially now that I know in a pinch I can use the tap water.
I'm really trying to get it back on the rails, so far it's paying off. Thanks for the words of encouragement!

Float valve! only way I fly.

 

[Rjukan]

Finally got around to taking the horrible background off, and painting the back glass black today! Very happy with how it came out.

Before:

After:

 

[Rjukan]

I saw someone a month or so ago that used a diffuser for a light rack and totally forgot about my reef brites at the time. Anyway, I remembered last night and built this nice rack for them! It's perfect since I can easily take them off and put to the side when I need to get in the tank.


That stuff is just so useful!

 

[Rjukan]

The 7.5g is plumbed and running!!

It was a process to say the least, with a few setbacks along the way but it's done and I'm really happy with how it came out. I had a thread where I asked about small bulkheads, but I'm going to detail the process here for posterity lol.

I had this tank plumbed into the system before, and it was detailed earlier in the thread:

All plumbed in and water is flowing:

It looked nice and all, but there were problems right from the start. The 2 major issues were the bulkheads it came with from the previous owner, and my plumbing design with those long horizontal runs. My thought was to have a place for pods to multiply then take the nice easy ride down the drain directly into the display. Good in theory, terrible in reality. That didn't last long, I removed the drain to the display and plumbed it down next to the emergency drain, again with a long horizontal run. I was dealing with a siphon drain that would surge and make tons of noise, I just couldn't get it dialed in. The tank ended up having a slow leak in one of the drain bulkheads and one day it overflowed due to algae buildup on the overflow teeth. That was the final straw and I tore it down.
Fast forward to some time in Jan, and I decided to pull it out of the attic thanks to @twentyleagues and I started to think about what I could do with it. First thing was cutting out the messed up bulkheads:

 

[Rjukan]

That wasn't going to cut it, the inner diameter of what he used was tiny, maybe 3/8" I really don't know how that even worked. There was a gasket shoved in the middle of one too lol.
So I spent some time looking around for a bulkhead solution that would fit in these holes. Tried one idea I had and it wouldn't work. Decided on a thread through design with a female fitting on the outside, and a o ring gasket on the inside. Problem was I still couldn't find anything small enough... so I just made the holes bigger for what I had ordered!


It was nerve wracking but it worked out really well.


Bought a set of diamond grinding bits for my dremel, was like $13 shipped. And the result:

 

[twentyleagues]

That wasn't going to cut it, the inner diameter of what he used was tiny, maybe 3/8" I really don't know how that even worked. There was a gasket shoved in the middle of one too lol.
So I spent some time looking around for a bulkhead solution that would fit in these holes. Tried one idea I had and it wouldn't work. Decided on a thread through design with a female fitting on the outside, and a o ring gasket on the inside. Problem was I still couldn't find anything small enough... so I just made the holes bigger for what I had ordered!


It was nerve wracking but it worked out really well.


Bought a set of diamond grinding bits for my dremel, was like $13 shipped. And the result:

Nice looks like it worked! Have you tested it yet?

 

[Rjukan]

Nice looks like it worked! Have you tested it yet?

Thanks! Yes, it's running as of last night. When I'm on coffee break I'll post the rest of the work.

 

[Rjukan]

Here it is test fitted with the O ring gaskets on the inside. Used some 90° elbows and leak tested the homemade bulkhead, no leaks!

 

[Rjukan]

Ok so this time I wanted to make sure there were no horizontal runs to the plumbing, and I didn't want to attach it to the wall like last time either. I was going to heat up the pvc and bend it where I wanted, but that was way too much work and decided on using fittings instead.


Luckily it's a short run..


I used a piece of PEX pipe for the transition from the pump line into the tank, it fit perfectly into the hole in the old AIO divider.

Added a coat of paint, and all done! I ended up forgetting to glue the top of the drain lines where it meets the bulkhead, so there was a tiny leak. Popped them out yesterday and cemented them, was back in action 3 hours later.


Put a piece of LR from my sump in there for now, while I wait for the next big addition! It's coming on 3/5...

 

[Rjukan]

Oh.. but ofc there was another hiccup I forgot to mention. After I mounted the tank on the desk so it wouldn't slide (the trim is raised, so I put 4 small screws in the desk at each inside corner so the tank is solid), I filled the tank with water and right away noticed how wobbly everything was. If I touched the desk there were ripples all over, even if I stepped on the floor near the desk it would shake it. Also, with the weight of the water, the tank tilted about 1/8" left to right.
I ended up propping the desk up with a post, got it all level, then built a bracket into the wall for the desk to rest on and be screwed into. It's completely rock solid now, and you don't see any of the bracket..


Always fun to have to come up with something completely unexpected when I thought I was finished lol.