It's been a little bit since I updated. I added live rock and sand last Thursday.
I had a misadventure last Friday night as I thought I had a tank leak.
The family and I were going to see a school play and I heard water dripping as we were getting ready to leave. I couldn't see it, but I definitely heard the sound of water hitting the carpet. In a panic, I slid the sump out of the way to reach the carpet on the backside of the sand and sure enough, water. I searched frantically before realizing the drip was coming from the overflow on the left side of the tank. At some point I apparently cracked it where the drain hose connects and there was a steady drip of water from where I had tested the spraybar before. I
think I was able to repair it with PVC primer and cement. I figured the worst thing I could do was make it worse by melting the plastic and at best I'd fix it. I gooped the stuff on hoping it would chemically melt back together.
That crisis was averted, however when I slid the sump over, the little acrylic hangar that holds a bulkhead for the drain hoses got bound and broke. I tried to use model glue to put it back together but I don't think it's a strong enough solvent. Anyone know what to use? I can do without it by just shoving the drain hose into the filter sock if I've got to.
Another issue I had was that the way this stand is made, neither the top nor the bottom is a single piece of wood. Instead, each is two pieces butted together and held by two flat metal plates and a total of 8 round head screws. I didn't want my sumpo to sit directly on that for fear of it developing stress cracks where it would sit on the hardware. I ended up cutting down an old styrofoam shipping box figuring it would compress over the hardware wnough to provide a flat surface for the bottom of the sump. Another crisis solved through redneck engineering.
However, that created the problem that my spraybar was now sitting too high and the holes I drileld as siphon breaks would almost squirt water over the front of the tank.
I ended up ripping out the majority of the PVC and replaced it with PVC braided hose.
Here she is now.
I have some life on the rock. Several feather dusters, an aiptasia (why does this stuff live through everything?), and I saw some kind of little snail tonight. I lost some orange sponge because I couldn't rehydrate the rock fast enough. I have ammonia and was going to put some in to see what happened, but thinking about it, I'm fearful that I might kill off what I have.
Any suggestions on that?
) It ended up being cheaper to go with blue since I still had some left after painting the 37 years ago.
