My YOUTUBE video of my surge device/wavemaker

[jigsaw1982]

Here is the link for my youtube video showing my diy project of my surge device/wave maker. All I used was some PVC pipe, some nylon braided tubing, a 5 gallon bucket, and a pump placed up in the bucket. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkxSYrFyFdo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkxSYrFyFdo</a>

Let me know what you think

 

[jef4y]

Neat idea! Thanks for sharing!

(had I not eaten an entire humble pie this morn I'd give you hell for the video skills, but this guy has zero room to talk right now. LOL)

 

[acroholic]

I built a twin Carlson surge device like that for a 58 gallon Reef in 1996, one for each side of the tank, but on a smaller scale, like 1.5 gallons each. Neat device. I think they lost some of their popularity because of the tremendous amount of microbubbles, salt spray and noise they introduce into a tank, which back then people loved because it looked/sounded like wave action on the reef. Things have changed, and no microbubbles and silence are the norm now.

One suggestion I have for your setup is to incorporate an overflow near the top of the bucket side, with a hose from it back into the tank, in case your siphon fails, gets clogged, or whatever, so you are not overflowing the bucket and making a flood. I had an overflow on each of my surge containers.

 

[picoreefguy]

very cool man the GA aquarium uses something similar on their huge reef display "Tropical Diver" but theirs is on a much bigger scale like 10000 gallons per surge lol but instead of piping their holding buckets (i guess thats what you would call them) into the exhibit they are on a swivel so whenever the water gets to a certain level it tips over and all the water gets dumped into the display

 

[jigsaw1982]

Acroholic;793035 wrote: I built a twin Carlson surge device like that for a 58 gallon Reef in 1996, one for each side of the tank, but on a smaller scale, like 1.5 gallons each. Neat device. I think they lost some of their popularity because of the tremendous amount of microbubbles, salt spray and noise they introduce into a tank, which back then people loved because it looked/sounded like wave action on the reef. Things have changed, and no microbubbles and silence are the norm now.

One suggestion I have for your setup is to incorporate an overflow near the top of the bucket side, with a hose from it back into the tank, in case your siphon fails, gets clogged, or whatever, so you are not overflowing the bucket and making a flood. I had an overflow on each of my surge containers.

Good Idea with the overflow...thanks. =-)

Edit:

Picoreefguy;793037 wrote: very cool man the GA aquarium uses something similar on their huge reef display "Tropical Diver" but theirs is on a much bigger scale like 10000 gallons per surge lol but instead of piping their holding buckets (i guess thats what you would call them) into the exhibit they are on a swivel so whenever the water gets to a certain level it tips over and all the water gets dumped into the display

Yeah I heard about GA Aquarium doing something like this. Talk about bubbles well if they are just dump 10,000 gallons of water all at once its kind of hard to not create some bubbles.

 

[jef4y]

Do the behind the scenes tour at GA Aquarium or youtube it. It's a very fascinating setup! I've seen it done on home aquariums but it's cumbersome, loud, messy and kinda ugly.

 

[picoreefguy]

yea it creates massive amounts of bubbles but they have like 30 feet of water so the bubbles dont go down more than a few feet