if you are needing a somewhat inept helper, i am going to be passing through your area tomorrow/wed. I even have a little box of goodies to drop off next time i see ya.

I think the gaskets sorta swell slightly when wet just a theory. Sounds similar to a leak or two I've had before that actually stopped leaking after a few days.

Thanks so much Nick. I think I will do my best to get a little farther tonight. If you can give me a heads up as to when you are in town, we'll try to get together. You haven't seen the tank for a bit, but we're getting there!

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/de...-on-laptop.jpg

Wake me up when you are going to carry on with this build thread Mark......:razz:

Haha...I put water in the tank last night thank you very much! I'm up to about 280G in the Display. I didn't let it run into the overflow yet...I have a couple little drips to deal with.
Some other things that came up are that I'm not too impressed with how quiet this pump is...I find it very noisy but a lot of threads online suggested it was very quiet...so is my pump the problem or do we just have different perspectives?
Also, the flow is poor by my standards. I bet I have only about 1000-1100 gph getting to the display. I was hoping for more.
Lastly, I got one of my MP40ES's going last night (the new one that had been sitting in the box for 2 years) and it's crazy noisy. but not at the wet end, the dry end sounds like a buzzsaw. My other MP40 is half as loud but it's still in my old display. Could this be because I have 16mil of glass on that end? I have it on the 5/8 setting. Any thoughts?

Mark, is the pump noisy because you're not used to listening to a big pump? It may be quiet by "big pump" standards? Or maybe there is something in the way it is setup?

:lol: Shoulda bought Tunzes! :p

I recently replaced one of my Reeflo pumps and I was horrified at how loud the new one was, it was louder than the one I was replacing that had a failed bearing. I called Reeflo and put the phone up to the pump after asking "should it sound like this?" .... He thought it was a dry bearing so he suggested I let it run for 10-15 minutes. After that it still was loud so he thought maybe a bad bearing so he asked that I send it back and he'd send me a replacement. As I went to take it offline I noticed that the fan cover had a small dent in it. Went and grabbed some needle nose pliers and pulled it out and sure enough what was happening was the fan blades were hitting the low spot caused by the dent and were basically slowly grinding off.

Anyhow the pump is flawlessly quiet now that I pulled that dent out.

Just something to check. A bit of a long shot, but it couldn't hurt to check for that...

Thanks everyone for their suggestions. I will follow up on both ideas. One thing I noticed is that both pumps are Blackfin 3600's but the 2nd one I put online weighs almost half of the other one. They are otherwise identical.

Any thoughts on my Vortech?

Bad Bearings? It does happen..

Let it run in for a bit. Could be 2 years in the box, the bearing grease needs to be warmed up good & get to all the nooks & crannies. If you're not sure about the spacer setting, you can always play around with that a bit. Also, when I align my VorTechs, I always put my ear to the glass to help find the sweet spot. Even though it's your dry side making all the noise, a slight misalignment could be a factor.

I'd give it a few days to run in, if that doesn't work, you might have a dud dry side.