Skimmer feed redux:
Like my 3/4" to 1-1/4" union and a valve??
Man that took trips to Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Rona just to get the pieces. Had to use a 1-1/2" valve and 1-1/2" union because I couldn't find enough connectors to make 1-1/4" throughout work. Nobody had threaded-to-threaded reducing bushings and nobody had 1-1/4" close nippes so 1-1/2" it had to be, slip to thread reducing bushings. Oh well, other than it feels enormous for the size it could have been, at least it should be functional.
Where things are at now:
Still lots of stuff on the catwalk but I'll get to cleaning that up later. The yellow 1/4" line was coming off my RO/DI reservoir so I could fill up the sump faster (the RO/DI was on and the reservoir was draining). Still took bloody forever to fill, but I did get it filled and turned the sump return pump on for the first time tonight.
So the good news there is even at full bore the wavebox does not cause the waves to slap up, against, or over the Eurobracing as I had been concerned about all along. HOLY CRAP! Did I understand that right? Something DIDN'T screw up??? Yikes, call it a day and FAST. So, pumps are currently off for the time being until I figure out what's next on the task list.
Interestingly, once the pump got turned on and the water level rose in the display tank, the amplitude of the wave diminished significantly. It seems it's well above the sweet spot of the wavebox. The wavebox itself cannot be raised because it's butted up against the Eurobracing so it could be that I'll never really have a big wave in the tank anyhow. Oh well, as long as I can get some kind of back and forth whoosh whoosh going in there, I will be happy, the actual height of the wave is more of a novelty anyhow to me.
Just as a footnote to other things that happened this week:
- The bike spokes idea appear to be working. I have a working powerhead again on the left side of the cube!
- Since I had nothing to lose on the broken needlewheel impeller anyhow for the Bubble Magus skimmer on the carpet tank, I broke off the remaining pieces of the needlewheel disk so all I had was the magnet shaft. Then I cut a little plastic circle out of some plastic I found, glued that to the impeller shaft using Weldon-16, and then cut out some circles from some leftover Enkamat I had lying around. I meshmod'd my BM100! Haha, woot! I have a working skimmer again on that tank. And after 1 day it seems to be kicking butt too. Well, it's certainly kicking butt over when it wasn't working at all, if nothing else.