Convert John Guest fittings to air line

[weaglereefer]

Ok, I got all the leaks in the kalk reactor sealed up, put on a MJ-600 instead of the MJ-400 that was on there, it's good to go. It ran for 24 hours without dripping a bit and now that I've been looking for a pump, it seems that Aqualifters use the soft flexible airline tubing while the kalk reactor has John Guest fittings for the input and output. Is there any easy way to do this, or am I better off switching the fittings out for ones that accept airline or finding a pump that has John Guest outlets?

Any thoughts on where to find either of those? (fittings or pump)

 

[acroholic]

You can use 1/4" OD PEX (cross linked polyethylene) tubing on your JG fittings, and it should work with an Aqualifter as well. It is kind of in-between the softnes of airline tubing and rigid airline. Buy it at any HD or Lowes. I use it on my Nilsen/Osmolator setup. My Nilsen has JG fittings.

Used a lot for refrigerator icemaker supply lines, I think. Milky white in appearance.
Dave

 

[weaglereefer]

Ok, cool. I wasn't sure it would fit the Aqualifter, I know it's a bit flexible, but don't know how much room I had to work with. I got about 20ft of the 1/4" PEX tubing sitting here, so I know it works with JG fittings, just wasn't sure about the pump and didn't want to order and get stuck with a pump.

Thanks!

 

[acroholic]

One thing to pay attention to, however, is how the pex will connect to the AL pump. Pex is really hard to remove from barbed fittings, so if the Aqualifter has a barbed output, you may want to connect airline to the AL, then use a barb x barb to connect to the pex, just so you don't run the risk of snapping off the barb from the AL if you ever need to remove/replace the connection to the AL.

If the AL has a simple slide on output fitting like an air pump, then directly connecting pex shouldn't be a problem.

 

[weaglereefer]

Sounds great! Thanks for the info!