Chuck's 150 Gallon Reef Project

[ChuckG]

GRRRRRRRRR

Broke the ceramic impeller shaft on the pump when I took the housing off. Luckily, I have a spare impeller. Anyone know where you can just buy the shaft? I now have lots of impeller parts - I've now broken two shafts for this thing.

[phlounder]

See if this will help you out.....
Mag Pump Parts - Pet Solutions

Man, I am just helping you all over the place today! You owe me at least a couple beers! Ha!

[ChuckG]

I actually tried to give you some karma earlier and it said I had to share the wealth.

That link is for the whole impeller. I can find the entire impeller on lots of sites but haven't been able to find just the shaft of the impeller. I doubt that you can buy it that way but i thought I'd try. The only place that "might" I suppose would be straight from the manufacturer.

[phlounder]

I think it says impeller assy, so I am assuming that is how they sell them. Oh well, I tried. Only one beer then. Ha!

[ChuckG]

NO MORE LEAKS - YAY!

Salt Mixer is up and running.

Final Stats on Noise Level: Drum has 25 gallons of water in it (about half full). The noise level from the bubbles entering the drum are slightly more than the sound of the Mag 12 running. Mags aren't exactly quiet pumps.
Gary - what you could do is take a piece of tubing to car parts store and get a black rubber cap that will fit the tubing. Go ahead and do the mod and if it is too noisey for you then simply cap it. You can always remove the cap to aerate your water just before your water changes. OR you could put an airline control valve on it. This isn't tested but I'd be willing to bet that you could reduce the amount of air entering the pipe to make smaller and fewer bubbles that would still aerate the water over time and reduce the noise almost completely.

[ChuckG]

Theory Confirmed on the Air Line valve:

I couldn't find a valve so I just stuck my finger over the tubing. It was EASY to get the bubble flow to a point that was sufficient for aeration and the ONLY noise I could hear was the Mag 12 running. Now that I know this, I will add a valve myself.

[RonnieM]

Thats a pretty slick mixing station Chuck. Trying to figure out where I can sneak one of those in at my place.

[ChuckG]

Minimum area needed would be 2' x 2' and that would be putting the pump internally as Gary did and without an RO reservoir. You "could" add a float valve inside the drum and have it fill directly from your RO/DI with no reservoir needed but you would need almost a day to allow it to fill unless you have a super duper RO/DI unit.

[ChuckG]

Added some final touches to the mixing station:

BIG numbers because I'm blind.



I placed a flashlight in the back as a test. Now I will need to mount a cheap light behind the tank that I can turn on and easily see the level.



Did some test cuts on a scrap piece of glass for when the tanks arrive. They are still on back order.

I used a dremel for this with a diamond cut off wheel as well as a dremel tile cutting bit. It was my first attempt and yes, I did skip once but I was really just seeing if I could cut the stuff at all without it breaking or getting really big chips in it so I was kind of purposely being haphazard about it.



Not too bad - eh?
Even though I'm getting diamond hole saws for the holes I will still need to cut a weir in the back of the tank for the external overflow.
I could not get a complete cut using the diamond cut off wheel. I had to finish the cut with the tile cutting bit which did knock out the entire piece at one point (that I didn't like). Believe it or not - I like the carbide tip tile cutting bit over the diamond wheel. It cuts slower but you have more control over it. The cutting bit showed no signs of wear at the completion whereas the diamond wheel shows significant wear.

Since everyone drills their tanks using some sort of dam with liquid as a coolant I wondered how I could get a coolant onto the glass while making cuts as I needed to.

The answer:



Use a dosing jug. I couldn't find the tubing that came with it but I found an airline valve so with a little airline, some teflon tape and the airline valve I had a drip coolant that flowed over the glass as I cut it.
Another TIP brought to you by DIY Chuck..............

Now that airline valve has been put onto my salt mixing station.

[ChuckG]

Had to give the glass cutting a second try. My first attempt at a free hand hole.



I've seen bigger chips on holes done with hole saws.

That's a one inch diameter hole so those chips are very, very small.