tunze wavebox in action

TANGBOY5000 said:
Yes, shortening of tank life is a concern. Why can't we just have our cake and eat it too.

Life expectancy from 15 down to 12 years :eek: , but then again who really keeps their tanks that long?

djfrankie
 
I would certainly be interested in seeing more video of the wavebox in operation on different sized tanks, and with the multiple waves on bigger tanks. Perhaps on a very long tank of say 10', this thing may look very very good indeed. Perhaps worthy of designing a tank around.
Mike
 
It seemed to my logic that it shouldn't shorten tank life but the team engineers said otherwise and so I am correcting my previous statements. A surge box would do the same, fluctuating water levels create dynamic stress and cause the silicon to flex and strain, there just is no way around it.

Flow was calculated by multiplying 1/2 of wave height times frequency times number of wave frequencies in an hour.

We spent the last two years making sure the pump is silent and will take the abuse, all of the stream redesigns that have occured to give us the 6200 and fish care function were part of the changes that were needed to make the wavebox.
 
Would the shortening of tank life occur in acrylic tanks as well or would
they be immune since there are really no seams? I wonder if this unit would invalidate the lifetime warranty on most acrylic tanks?
 
I don't know. I would think acrylic may be immune but acrylic presents some difficulties with mounting that would need to be explored first.
 
Absolutely. The main problem is that it needs to be able to breathe so a small space has to exist between the brace and the box and the box needs to stick out of the water a bit.
 
How much does it need to stick out of the water--in general my water line is no where near the top of my tank anyways, but out of curiosity???
 
Give me a couple weeks to get pricing to all the dealers. The main hold up on the wavebox is a manual and getting a few hundred stored up, we won't release it until a fair amount are built in hopes we can avoid some of the delays we have had with the Stream. The current approximation is we will have it in August.

In should stick out about 2" on a 180.
 
You can't run the water 2" below the surface? This factors in a 3/4" wave and about 1" above the surface of the wave- likely it could be less but I won't know until I try.
 
I dunno....I don't think so....not w/my current overflow configuration....I suppose if I cut the teeth longer, but that'd be a lot of time w/a dremel....
 
I think it should work, I will get one late this week and try it on a friends 180 Oceanic and let you know.
 
Will do. I have a few short movies that have more of the details from several angles including what is happening in the box and conroller but I need to get them edited.
 
Roger,
I don't think it's accurate to equate the stress placed on a tank between the water motions created by the wavebox to a surge bucket. In the case of a surge bucket, the water is constantly rising and lowering within the tank as a whole. Granted this will cause some additional stress compared to a static level but the side-to-side wave action produced by the wavebox adds much greater lateral forces that I would estimate to cause much greater stress levels.
Your comments stating tank life reduction based on "quality built" tanks leads me to believe that Tunze may want to consider a waiver document to be signed by the purchaser at the time of purchase. ;) Unfortunately, there are many less than "quality built" tanks out there.

Joseph
 
As I said the instructions have yet to be written and so we know it is a problem and they said as much, that if a customer put it on a 15 year old tank it may fall apart in 5 minutes. On the other hand, I think the cutsomers that buy Tunze equipment generally have spent well on the whole set up and likely have a nice tank too. I personally think it is a non issue as you could dial the wave down quite low and having worked in aquarium shops most of my life the amount of strain a tank can take is rather amazing, I was always impressed more tanks didn't fail, the ratio is very low.
 
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