Acrylic Filter Overflows (no lilies!)

[Mori]

Mine are a few months old and still work. They are sludge brown of course, but my goal was more just cheap extensions than beauty. They're quite obvious since my tank is almost empty at this time but at least they aren't nuclear waste green.

I bent mine over the gas stove using a silicon oven mitt to shape them. You can squish them back if they start to cave in. I had trouble getting my tubing to work.

[Wasserpest]

Originally Posted by Mori

I bent mine over the gas stove using a silicon oven mitt to shape them. You can squish them back if they start to cave in. I had trouble getting my tubing to work.

Did you get a nice even radius just by doing this by hand?

[Mori]

Not perfect, but my mitts are huge and stiff and my tiny hands could barely bend inside them. I would have had better luck with just the square oven thingy instead of the mitts which are hard to even cook with, let alone do fine art in.

I believe that with properly fitting mitts, one could have very good results. My results are entirely satisfactory, but could look better. I suspect that combining the hose technique with the hands-on method would be pretty good. You just slowly heat, bend, heat, bend, turn the fan up another notch, heat, bend...

The tubes do shrink a little with heat. Does the airline keep the ID from shrinking?

[Wasserpest]

Yeah, that's the point of the rubber fuel line, to keep the ID as round and big as possible. That said, there is some flattening of the previously perfect circle.

I just can't imagine how you bend this using oven mitts without totally collapsing or weird angles. I used a little 3/4" elbow to get that perfect circle.

[Mori]

If it starts to collapse, you just pinch the wide part to poof it out again. I didn't just heat til goopy and bend. It took several passes, heating until slightly flexible, mold it a little, heat some more, etc. Fitting it into an elbow would have made for a nicer curve than my freehand efforts, though. It's not a perfect U; it almost has corners.

[Wasserpest]

I see... BTW you can tell from my picture (first post) that the pipes flattened a little bit where the radius was bent.

[jgc]

Thanks for the idea of using fuel tubing (was offline in April, so am a little behind)

lfs is getting me some thinwall acrylic 1/2" (not sure if id or od) 3' for $3. Will see if this works. While eventually would love some clear non-lilly pipes, my first attempt will be more ambitious - an acrylic paperclip - constant level syphon for a nano sump. Call me crazy, but feel safer testing new ideas small (1 gallon tank rather than 10 or 58).

If the paperclip works, I might try a larger sump for fert mixing/constant level, and daily water changes for the larger tank (10gallon, low flow sump)

[Wasserpest]

Keep in mind these things get a little fragile at the bends. So as you get to larger scale, I think supporting them so nothing heavy puts stress on them might be a good idea.

Uhm, what I mean is... don't do what I am doing here:

[csf]

I've put salt into a tube that I bent before. It helped the tubing to keep its shape. You pack it full with table salt (Morton's, etc.) and then bend it. You have to kind of keep it packed in w/ your fingers on the ends, but you don't have to be super-particular about it.

It worked for me, your mileage might vary. You can also try sand.

[Martin]

I made these:



used this to bend & shape;



and the result;



a more detailed journal in Danish is here;

Akvarieplanter.dk :: Vis emne - DIY - indsugning & udstrømmer i klar akryl.

quite a lot more photos.

[Wasserpest]

Sweet... looks really professional.

For the non-danish speaker with average sized monitor, can you share what you used to keep them nice and round? I figure it is some sort of filled garden hose.

[Martin]

1 way is to click the link, and see the images on my own site.

but ofcourse, for the non-danish speaker...

I tried a few ways, first I used sand, but that didn't work. Sand was to coarse, and it embedded itself in the pipe. Then I tried salt, as per a user here. Salt kept the bend rather smooth, but again, it embedded itself in the pipe.

I then tried a rigid gardenhose, but suffice to say... rigid & heat=soooooft.

So I took a piece of rigid gardenhose, and filled that piece with salt, since salt worked the best for me.
I fdid a test run, the bend came out wonderful, but alas.. the hose stayed well put.
I had to saw the pipe to remove the hose. Mind, I used 1 meter of acrylic pipe to do all these testruns.

I then pulled out my trusty Vaseline... mmmm... I rubbed it in real good and when to work on my pipe... by now you're probably not thinking acrylics..

nevertheless, this was how I created the pipes. I decided to move the hose back and forth whilst heating up the pipe, to even any heat that might start softening the hose. When I was ready to bend the pipe, I pulled the gardenhose back or forth, so the piece of hose, that was positioned where the bend was supposed to be, was as cold as possible.

2 of the bends I made with a long piece of hose, the last bend I made with a smaller piece of hose.

I then just sawed the outflow bit so it would give a nice current at the surface.

[epicfish]

How innovative. Salt inside a garden hose inside the acrylic tube!

[Martin]

lol. Well it did the job.

[Wasserpest]

Thanks for the explanation... lol. I did look at the pictures, but my laptop set to 1024x768 was way overwhelmed

I noticed too that removing the fuel rubber lines that I used for smooth bends was the most difficult part. Rubbing in vaseline... how innovative, indeed.