Help! We caused a bulkhead to lead on our reefready Oceanic

[FishyMel]

We bumped the drainpipe in the overflow box today while servicing my oceanic reefeady tank and it made the bulkhead leak underneath. A constant drip, drip! How can I make the bulkhead stop leaking quickly. The tank is full with animals and water so draining it and rescrewing the whole thing is not an option. Any quick way to seal a leaky bulkhead??? TIA

 

[reefrunner69]

Sorry, you probably wrinkled the gasket, it will need to be removed, cleaned and the re screwed, there is no quick permanant way to seal them. FWIW, you shouldn.t have to drain the tank, just shut off the pump, once it drains down to the top of the overflow...remove a couple more gallons, then pull the PVC standpipe out of the bulkhead, this should drain the water in the overflow into the sump...then take the bulkhead off and redo it, this may be more complicated if the bulkhead is hard plumbed to the sump

 

[Hara]

just to add to kevins advice, watch for small grains of sand on the gasket...this will cause it to leak (been there and done it with our oceanic setup)

 

[FishyMel]

Thanks for the tips! Luckily we didn't hard plum anything, and wish I had thought about the sand grit last night. So far so good, and not leaks anymore. The real kicker was that as we unscrewed bulkhead, it came off crooked and got jammed. Took and hour to be able to unscrew the dang thing. It was really stuck on there good. But we finally got it off, and just replace the whole bulkhead and gasket and everything is fine now. (Knock on wood)