Water on the floor

And it was all my fault.

I woke up Saturday morning to the sound of the recirculation pump squealing. I have a spare bearing set for it, so I figured I’d just pull the pump and replace the bearings. I get the pump out just fine with only spilling a bit of water only to find that once off the tank, the pump was no longer making noise.

I grabbed the two ends of the pump and found that if I flexed it just a little, the squealing came back. That’s easy enough to fix, I just need to put something solid under the back of the pump to keep it from flexing.

I put the pump back on the tank and decide I wanted to fix one of the wave maker returns that was being stressed. I gather all my PVC materials and reach up and cut the pipe… which happened to be below the hight of the water in the tank. Water starts pouring out of the top of the pipe. Some quick thinking on my part and I grab the coupler and extension I was going to put on it and shove it on the end of the pipe, stopping the water flow.

I then spent the next 30 minutes with towels and the shop vac cleaning up the water from all over the floor.

So, here I sit… the floor is dry, but I have the PVC pipe dry fitted onto the end of a pipe that as soon as I remove it, water starts pouring out.

I turn off the main pump and let the tank water drop down a few inches. I check, but the PVC is still a bit lower than water height.

I finally decide to just go for it. I take my pipe glue and put it within arms reach. I wrap a large towel around the pipe. I grab the extension, I pull it off, stick it on my thumb, grab the glue, put it on the pipe, and then I shove the extension back onto the end of the pipe. Only about half the towel got soaked in those few seconds… not bad.

I finish my repair work, and pick up all the tools making sure nothing is leaking. Then I grab the son and we head to Hooters for lunch.

What I thought was going to be a quick 1 hour task ended up taking 2.

On a side note, I did end up swinging by the aquarium store and picking up 10 snails for the tank. They seem happy, or at least the ones I can find.

Also, after moving a bunch of rock around last week, the wave maker is clogged again. I’m hoping clean water flowing through it will clear it out, but I’m betting I’ll have to pull it off again and disassemble it and clean it. That was such a pain in the butt. I really need to redesign how it’s mounted on the tank.