Major Plumbing Problem

[evallarta1]

I decided to redo my plumbing yesterday and today because it just wasnt working for me and I wanted to change a few things. In the process I made two big mistakes. First I cracked one of my bulkhead fitting. No big deal I was able to get a new one. And the second major problem is I over tightened the nut and I ended up putting a couple chips in around the hole in the glass. After about an hour of freaking out I jumped online and decided to silicone the gaps and then double gasket the bulkhead fitting. My question is how long can my tank handle not having my fuge running? I was planing on putting water in the overflow chamber tomorrow in the late morning. It hasnt been running since yesterday afternoon. And I had it running for about an hour today testing everything. Its a 75 gal with 3 power heads running. I have 2 clowns, 1 yellow watchman and a small clean up crew. Will it be ok til tomorrow? Thanks

[Triggerjay]

First,... where is your heater located? second, do you have a powerhead you can drop in the fuge? Looks like you have a pretty small bio-load.. I would say you would be fine without the fuge for some time.

Jason

[fatman]

Is your fuge your only source of biological filtration? Meaning do you have live rock or a deeps sand bed in your tank? If not, then do not feed your tank inhabitants until your refugium is back on line. Up to a week or ten days or so without food will not hurt most fish out higher order invertebrates. Your refugium will need food if it goes over a few days without an exchange of nutrient laden water from your display tank. Bacteria numbers and lower order invertebrates decline in number quickly without nutrients. They do feed off of each others remains though, so the can go quite a while before completely dieing out. However, feeding them just means a tiny pinch of fish food. If you do not have an extra small pump aan airstione hooked up to a small air pump would be sufficient. Unless you have anemones it is very doubtful that your nitrate levels will climb enough in a few days to matter to much. Fish can tolerate very high levels of nitate and on your glass and the other surfaces of your aged tank should contain enough bacteria to break fish wastes down from ammonia to nitrates on for a short while. Corals will stop growing but will survive for a long time with increased nitatres. The main thing is to not have ammonia in your tank.
Chips around drilled glass holes are very common, even amongst factory ground (cut) holes. That is hy often there is sanding around the holes. They are sanding away obvious chip outs. If the chip out goes beyond the boundary of the bulkhead gasket, then all that is really needed is to apply silicone to the chipped out area that ptotrudes beyond the gasket, before apply the bulhhead gasket. It actually works best if you apply it flush with the glasses surface and apply it in time to fully cure before apply the bulkhead gasket and the bulkhead. The side of the gasket with the nut needs no gasket even if there are chips. Bulkheads are usually best applied with a little lubricant (silicone plumbers lubricant, vegetable cooking oil, or even just water is occasionally used) and installed only as tight as they can be tighted without the use of a wrench or pliers, pipe wrench etc. If you can not grip it tight enough to tighten it bare handed it is better to use a cloth on the bulkhead instead of a mechanical assist. A damp wash cloth usually works great. Overtighteng causes chip outs, broken glass and stripped threads on the bulkheads which prevent removal of the bulkhead and often back off and leak and then cannot be further tightened due to stripped threads. This results in bulkheads that need to be cut off. Either Mega Flow or Oceanic used to provide a virtually handless wrench head for tightening bulkheads with their over flow kits for "reef ready" (ugh) tanks.

[evallarta1]

Thanks for the help guys. Yeah I have LR and sand in the tank. I checked this morning and everything seems good. Im going to let the silicone set for a few more hours before I turn everything back on. I also ended up putting a powerhead in my fuge for the time being.