LEAK!!! 1" Bulkhead needed

RobChuck

RobChuck

Premium Member
When I walked into my fishroom this evening to feed the tank, I felt the ominous presence of water beneath my feet. After several frantic minutes of searching for the source, I found a decent stream of water rolling down one of my drain pipes. After following the water past each fitting, it turns out that the bristle worms living in my overflow box chewed through the gasket and a decent amount of water was dripping out at the bulkhead.

That overflow box is now drained, the leak is no more, and the tank is running on a Wavebox and CL, but I'm now in need of a 1" threaded (on the flange side) x slip bulkhead to replace the damaged one so that I can bring the sump back online.

If anybody has an extra 1" threaded (on the flange side) x slip bulkhead (preferrably south of the city), feel free to PM me and let me know what you want for it. Otherwise, I'll give the boys at PA a call at lunch tomorrow.

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Can't help you out (don't even have a tank) but are you sure the bristleworms were the culprit (this is new news to me)? They get blamed for a lot but recent articles on them indicate they don't do so much in theway of damage. You might want to check for other causes.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6940648#post6940648 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jdhanover
Can't help you out (don't even have a tank) but are you sure the bristleworms were the culprit (this is new news to me)? They get blamed for a lot but recent articles on them indicate they don't do so much in theway of damage. You might want to check for other causes.
Click to expand...

The bristleworms are just a hunch. They curl up around the bulkheads and squeeze into the threads of the fitting that's screwed into the bulkhead. There's also one blue-legged hermit that made it's way in there, a scattering of sand, a bunch of sea squirts, sponges, and stuff, and a bunch of pods. I've got things under control now, so I'll go snap a pic of the overflow in a minute.

The speed at which the bulkhead failed leads me to believe that a critter damaged the gasket. (I was in and out of the room an hour before discovering the water).

RandalB deserves a HUGE thank you! I'll be picking up a replacement from him tomorrow.
 
MM,
Thanks for the offer...it looks like RandalB has one for me.

jdhanover,
Here is a pic of the overflow box (the faulty gasket/bulkhead is the one on the left). You can see my bristleworm collection in there. The sand ended up in there long after the bulkheads were installed and have ran leak-free for almost a year now. There are also some calcerous worm tubes higher up in the overflow box and I've just started noticing small feather dusters in there in the past few days. My instincts lead me to believe that something was digging or excavating their way through the gasket. Hopefully I'll gain some insight after I pull the current bulkhead out tomorrow.

Bulkhead.jpg
 
Will be good learning for all of us. Just seems odd to me (else I would think that it would have happened to others with some frequency especially those with closed loops, etc where there are bulkheads in the tank.
But maybe this is why some people also silicone the bulkheads?
 
Just got word back from an expert on bristleworms off a different site. It wasn't them. Most likely it was defectie to start, was dried out at some point or something else degraded it. He did say that one can silicone it...but not the gasket side (might degrade the gasket). He puts it on the inside of the nut and it works out great.
 
Randal,
I'll be in touch with you later this morning.

Jon,
Thanks for doing what you've done to help figure out what caused this. I hope it wasn't a bulkhead failure, as I have 9 other bulkheads from the same batch installed throughout the tank. After I pull it out this evening, I'll post my findings.

Thanks all!
 
Brings up an interesting question for me. the tank I am loooking to get will be drilled for a closed loop. Those bulkheads now scare me a bit because if one of them leaks I am screwed (would have to drain half the tank or more to get them out and replaced). Maybe this means I should put them in high on the back wall and run some PVC so that they drain and/or return from deeper?

Also, Rob - it could be just that one blukhead if it was installed too tight, got torqued etc. For your sake I sure hope it isn't the whole batch!
 
Thanks to RandalB, I've got a new bulkhead in hand and a mess of a plumbing project ahead of me this evening.

Thanks again Randal!
 
I just installed the replacement bulkhead and fixed the drain plumbing. After unscrewing the nut and looking up at the gasket, I discovered that the blame for the leak can be passed along to a bristleworm. Curled between the gasket and the acrylic tank bottom was a 2" long bristle worm.
 
No they didn't chew through. I am no expert but suspect there was a gap for some reason (maybe it got loose? or the gasket was faulty) and then the bristleworm got caught in there. They don't eat rubber. There is an article in Tropical Fish hobbyist a month or two ago about them. They eat dead fish but then people think they killed the fish.
If they ate rubber I think there would be a whole lot of leaking bulkheads!
 
I should add that there was no evidence of chewing or forced entry on the gasket, but somehow, a bristleworm still ended up between the gasket and the tank.

I'm stumped, but can't complain, as my tank isn't leaking anymore!
 
I have come across 2 seperate tanks that developed leaks. After I got them cleaned out, I found that there were holes bore into the silicone. I assume by a worm of some sort. Damn sand beds :lol:
 
Ugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This situation happened AGAIN to me, this time in the other overflow box. I walked into my fishroom right earlier this evening and felt the familiar splashing of water beneath my feet. Following the water source, I discovered it was coming from one of the bulkheads.

This time though, I simply loosened the nut and watched two bristleworms (both were at least 10" long) scatter out from beneath the gasket. Again, there was no physical damage to the gasket, so I simply siliconed the bulkhead into place really well and will clean it up later, as this tank will be converted into a planted tank in the next few weeks.
 
Any idea how to pevent this going forward? I pickup my tank today and while it will be some time before it is up and running I am trying to do as much up front to prevent problems down the road.
Wondering if this actually is caused by a faulty gasket. The bristelworms may then lodge i there but if these (or other) worms bore holes ingaskes, I still think we'd hear about this problem A LOT more, no?
 
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