A castle, a banana, a fish room, Montana

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burningmime

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The mixing station:

IMG_20210411_130348.jpg


(sorry about the watermark; forgot to turn it off)

This seems like the standard mixing station design. The "highlights", as they were:
  • There's a utility sink (on extremely rickety legs; maybe I shouldn't have bought the absolute cheapest one on Amazon)
  • RO/DI booster pump. It might be because of the angle of the water inline, but if I don't use the booster pump I'm at about 30 PSI, which is supposably bad for the resin. I also got the auto-flush kit since it wasn't much more expensive.
  • I tried repurposing the RO/DI flush valve (the white one right next to the tank on the left). But it doesn't fully close. I don't know if that's the nature of the valve or if I got a bad one, but when closed it just slows the water to like 1/4th speed. So the valve is kinda useless :-(
  • Iwaki pump is total overkill.
  • Booster pump is REALLY loud. My computer is 3 floors up from the basement and I hear it up here. If anyone has any tips to reduce the noise level, I'm all ears. Well, whatever's left of my ears after listening to the booster pump.
 
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Oberst Hajj

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Try putting some neoprene rubber between the pump and the wall, that should help with the vibrations. How well is the bulkhead on the right hand tank doing? I've always wondered if the flat bulkhead seals very well to the curved wall of the reservoir.
 
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burningmime

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Try putting some neoprene rubber between the pump and the wall, that should help with the vibrations. How well is the bulkhead on the right hand tank doing? I've always wondered if the flat bulkhead seals very well to the curved wall of the reservoir.
Thanks for the tip on neoprene rubber!

That's a uniseal so made for curved surfaces. The part where it's located is high enough that it's dry, although I did a quick leak test and it seems OK
 
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Minor update -- one major leak. Seems like one of the bulkheads that came on the tank is leaking, and it's in a bad place where it's not easy to cut out. Like an idiot I over-tightened it trying to fix it, so I can't seem to easily untighten it. Time to break out the elbow grease. Anyways, since the overflow compartment is mostly empty, it should be fixable if I can figure out how to unscrew this thing.
 
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Had my first major overflow this morning :). This *is* more fun than an AIO where everything just works straight out of the box. Flopper and ball valve weren't enough to stop the back siphon from the return. I didn't have nearly enough towels on hand to clean it up, but luckily I did have...

 

Oberst Hajj

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Thanks for the tip on neoprene rubber!

That's a uniseal so made for curved surfaces. The part where it's located is high enough that it's dry, although I did a quick leak test and it seems OK
Thanks for jogging my memory about uniseals! I had completely forgot about those guys. I'll be plumbing up my RODI system on Sunday and would have ran into an issue trying to use a standard bulkhead. So your reply saved me since I can get one delivered from Amazon tomorrow! Had a seen your reply when you made it, it would have been no big deal. lol
 
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burningmime

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Drilling into concrete sucks. It just sucks. Or maybe my foundation is mixed with diamond, I dunno. Anyway, after about 4 holes my hammer drill stopped working and it turns out my masonry bit was stripped. Just drilling enough holes to mount all this stuff is going to be a loooong job.
 
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OK; guess it's time to update this. Tank has been up and running for a little over a month now. I'll get some better pictures soon, but I don't have one of those fancy filters for my phone yet, so if I take any pics under plues everything looks washed out. This is what it looks like under whites. So I'm definitely well into my ugly phase. Dosed some MB Clean yesterday and turned off the skimmer + UV, so hopefully it'll start looking better soon:

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IMG_20210818_142016.jpg


Bonus pic of 4-day old kittens on a BRS sweatshirt:
IMG_20210818_133719.jpg
 

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