@Zagreus , thanks for the video post man
@gfish First on your warranty registration, did you submit through the website? Here’s a link to their warranty page:
https://www.pro-clear.com/warranty
When you go here, just input your info. The UPC’s for the ProStar 200’s are:
ProStar 200 Standard Overflow in Black = 204120
ProStar 200 Standard Overflow in White = 204229
ProStar 200 Peninsula Overflow in Black = 150014
ProStar 200 Peninsula Overflow in White = 150083
Put in that UPC and then the order receipt that you should have received from Live Aquaria for Proof of Purchase and you’ll be all set. Their warranty claiming process is spectacular, and that’s one of the reasons why we work with them. It’s honestly very comforting to know that if there ever is an issue with a client’s tank (which is rare) that it will get sorted same day or next. It’s happened before as with any aquarium company and the same day response for stuff like that on the vendor side is one of the reasons they’re the brand that we have worked with the longest. That’s just our experience. I guess it’s because we have direct contact with them every day or two anyways.
As far as your question on our experience with them as a dealer, they’ve definitely been an instrumental part of our success. We were a pretty small brand before working with them back in 2018, and through the past few years both our Pro Clear rep (who’s been running aquatics distribution chains for almost 20 years now) and the owner (working with acrylic and running Pro Clear for 25 years this year) have spent countless hours with us over the phone training us in not only their products, but actually taking a concern in us and our brand’s improvement. Not only how many sales we make. That’s very comforting to know on the business side, and it is extremely unique and something you don’t find very often. We only have worked with one other brand that has been like that, and we recently acquisitioned them. When you find supporters like this, you learn to make them lifelong because they don’t come around very often.
I don’t know, maybe a bit too much info. But you asked so I thought I’d be honest and share.
Called our rep Gary over there this morning and also spoke with the owner. Today is day 14 of their work streak and the shortest day they’ve had the past 2 weeks has been 9am - 9pm. They were there producing till 3-4am this morning to get an idea, and back at it again at 9am today, so this is most likely why you haven’t received a response yet. I think the last time we talked to them about it, 2020 almost doubled their production numbers (like 80% or something crazy cause aquatics is growing, and that’s the biggest growth factor of any aquatics business we know of)...and their team is maybe 20-30% bigger. If that. So you can do the math on that. They’re working on getting more people in right now, but hiring good people in Florida is very tough with the virus and people shying away from factory work.
Now onto your tank because this is a build thread and we know that’s why we’re all here. Yes @Tagreus is correct. There are two types of metric fittings (technically there’s more but these are the two we need to know here). “DIN Metric” is used in Europe and “JIS Metric” is typically used in Asia.
Thing is, you have to pay attention to if you’re working with a “DIN” metric fitting or a “JIS” metric fitting. Because a DIN 25mm and a JIS 25mm fitting are literally two different diameters. I know...stupid right?? Welcome to plumbing world
The ProStars do use 25mm OD and 32mm OD straight piping in their plumbing, so
@gfish perhaps you had purchased a few DIN fittings and just didn’t know it. In our search for fittings that would work, we found that many PVC retailers either didn’t know the difference themselves, or didn’t bother educating the customer (us) on the difference. Because of this, we made the same mistake for a few months.
Here’s a graph that shows the difference between the 2. Think of the “Nominal” column as the “Actual Diameter” of the part (even though it’s technically not quite, but for this example it’s a good benchmark).
That’s why I believe Gfish you were having so much trouble. I don’t know everything and am always willing to learn, but after dealing with this and hearing stories from many clients about ProStar plumbing conversions, that seems to be the case here.
Again, apologies I couldn’t make it to this thread earlier Gfish because now your plumbing is tore up. And fair enough because you hadn’t received any response from anyone over the past few days and had a beautiful empty tank in your place that you couldn’t set up because of this. So it’s understandable why you would go to seek out other options elsewhere.
For your build, would you mind PMing some pictures my way? I can take a look and either try to resolve with our team, or get in touch with Pro Clear to help how they can. Let me know because I’d rather you not drill your glass unless absolutely necessary. I believe I have an idea that could work for rectifying this whole situation, while keeping you from having to drill your glass. That is if you need help of course.
For everyone else here, if you’d like to convert your ProStar plumbing, we did find a set of fittings that we can have custom molded to fit the ProStar piping (they are what Tagreus used in his video above). I personally can’t post any info here about it because we are currently not an R2R Sponsor yet (on our list but not there yet) so we can’t self-promote in open posts like this. PM us and we can advise further.
The gate valve adapter fittings that
@Uncle99 posted about will also work well too. It’s nice to have some standard couplers that will convert the plumbing at the beginning of the pipe so it’s more flexible, but it just depends on the plumbing setup and what the user wants to do.
In either case, if you get your hands on a set of fittings that successfully convert everything over, then this is the best place to put them on the ProStar plumbing.
Here’s the entire ProStar plumbing for the ProStar 200 Standard like Gfish has:
Here’s where we would put any adapters, circled in red. Directly after the Black Threaded Bulkhead Adapters, Grey Union Fitting, and the first 90 Degree Elbow Fitting. Place the adapter there and on this tank size you will essentially still have free reign on what to plumb in 1”:
We hope this is valuable to the community, and helps to make everyone’s situation a bit better with these tanks, so we can stop banging our heads against a plumbing pipe and we can get to building and watching our display tank grow.
Any comments or questions welcome. Talk to y’all soon
To Your Success
