Rick's DIY Maxijet Mod...

melev

melev

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Thanks Rick. I made the change and it is running so much more flow in the tank of my son's 29g. Even the LTA is blowing over, and it is far away from the pump.

Pictures and explanation to follow.
 
Okay, here are the pictures.

Using a hacksaw, I cut off the jet off the impellar cover.
mj_mod1.jpg
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Holes were drilled in the coverplate to allow more water to flow in.
mj_mod2.jpg
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mj_mod3.jpg
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Here it is in the tank.
mj_mod4.jpg
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And what the tank looks like. The white is a sheet of eggcrate that keeps the eels away from the clownfish.
mj_mod5.jpg
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And a 30 second video that is under 2 megs.
 
I'm sure Marc will come along about 20 seconds after I make this post, but here's the correct link to the video:

http://www.melevsreef.com/video/mj_mod.wmv
 
And now for the mod - I've got a box full of Maxijets in one hand and a Dremel in the other, and I'm about to get medievel on 'em.

Question though - In the video you say it sometimes reverses and blows towards the glass. Is the flow still coming out of the same hole it originally was coming out of no matter which direction, or when it reverses does the water come out of a different place entirely?

Thanks!
 
Not a problem Chris, glad I could help...

And I think I figured it out, watched the video again a little more closely, and it LOOKS like it's coming outta the same "hole" both times, just at a different angle... Cool. Off to the store to get some vinegar to clean my MJ's up before I begin hacking away on 'em! :)

Ya' know you're a reef geek when you spend your Saturday night soaking Maxijets in vinegar, and hacking them up with a Dremel... AND WOULDN'T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY!
 
Serk,
Whenever you turn a mj on/off the impeller spins different directions. Normally, it doesn't matter what way the impeller spins, but when you cut off the nozzle, it changes the direction. On a wavemaker, it can be a sweet little mod.

Chris
 
Goose stopped by today, and told me he knows exactly what we need to modify it to switch on and off as much as we like, using parts from Radio Shack. I hope he'll chime in this thread. If he doesn't and only emails me, I'll post the details. I don't mind making a little switcher for this one pump on my son's tank.

(Link fixed.)
 
Sah-WEEEET! Just completely finished my first of 4 MaxiJets, and the flow is amazing! Corals on the other side of my 150 from the MJ were showing motion.

I'm in the middle of cleaning and doing this mod to all 4 of my MJ's. This gives me an idea too. As anyone who'll hold still long enough for me to brag about it knows, I've got a custom made Linux script that randomly turns each of my 4 MJ's on or off every 15 minutes. I'm thinking of modifying this just a tad once I've got all the pumps modified so it turns each pump off for 3 seconds every 15 minutes, THEN randomly turns it back on again (Or not). This way the pump's direction will be changed every 15 minutes no matter what...

Anyway, back to happily hacking my MJ's... :)
 
Sorry to keep posting on this thread, but I'm really enjoying this one! I just REALLY scared the wife again. I have 2 of my MJ's modded now, and was sitting in front of the reef with my laptop, turning 'em on and off repeatedly to see the different combinations of flow I get now. The whole time, exclaiming loudly with "Ooooooh!" and "Aaaaaah!" and "How Cool!"'s...

I 'spose the sight of me sitting there using my laptop to "Harass the fish" (her words) was kinda humorous, but dang this is cool!
 
Now Brian that made me laugh. And of course someone said what's so funny? I said never mind you wouldn't get it. :wink:
 
I've been running mine for months with the nozzles cut off, but not the extra holes. Do the holes make a big difference in flow?

Serk, are you using X-10 stuff to control the maxi jets? Also, for those of us that know better, what language did you write the progam in? For the few of us around here, calling it a linux script just isn't enough! :p
 
Rick - Glad I could bring a smile to the world... :)

Kevin -

No clue if the holes made any difference or not, but I figure they couldn't hurt. They definitely increase the volume area of where water can enter the pump, so they made sense to me...

As far as how I'm doing it all, not trying to sidetrack this thread, but it's all done with X10. I'm using the BottleRocket 0.04c command line control program, which is basically just a command line interface to X10 modules. For instance, to turn device D10 on, you'd just do "br d10 on" from the shell.
Most of the scripting is just that, just simple scripts that are kicked off from a cron. The only programs are simple (VERY simple, I'm not a programmer!) C programs that do things like pause for 3 seconds, or generate a random number between 1-100. The wave master script just runs the random number generator program, and if the value is >= 35, it turns the pump on, and there's one of these scripts for each of the 4 pumps, and they each run every 15 minutes...

Hope that makes sense. If anyone's interested, I'd be happy to post my scripts, but they're embarassingly simple really... :)

Okay, here's one of the scripts. This is one of 4 scripts for the MJ's, one for each of 'em:

<hr class="bbcode_rule" />
CUT HERE
<hr class="bbcode_rule" />

#!/bin/bash
random=`/root/scripts/wave_random`
if [ "$random" -ge 35 ];
then
br d8 on
echo >>/var/www/localhost/htdocs/pumps.txt $random " Pump 1 ON"
else
br d8 off
echo >>/var/www/localhost/htdocs/pumps.txt $random " Pump 1 OFF"
fi


<hr class="bbcode_rule" />
CUT HERE
<hr class="bbcode_rule" />

The wave_random is the C program I cobbled together that generates the random number. I'm sure there's a way to do this in the shell script, but I couldn't figure it out, so I kludged this together. The last bits about redirecting the output are so I can monitor the current status of my pumps from the web:

http://www.serk.net/pumps.txt

That was mainly when I first set everything up, but I've left it there just for the heck of it..... Oh, and if you're bored enough to go to that link tonight, the results are gonna be wonky all over the place, as I'm having fun modding the pumps, and tweaking everything. I'm DEFINITELY gonna hafta tweak this quite a bit, and most likely move some corals around. I'm up to 3 of the modded MJ's so far, and I'm having Zoa's being blown off rocks, SPS being blown off their mounts, etc... Too cool.....

Hope that makes sense... If ya' have any questions, lemme know, I really don't mind helping out...

(Oh, and before I get berated for it, yeah, I know, I'm being lazy and doing all this from root... I got tired of trying to get the permissions right for the serial port so a non-super user could use X10 and just did it all as root... -Hanging head in shame-)


Man, never has my signature been more true than in this thread! :)
 
Last night when I tried to feed the clownfish, the food was swept away through the grid into the eel section. It was crazy. I tried four times to get food to the hungry maroons, but even putting the food in the back (right in between the eggcrate and the skimmer's pump), it quickly washed around and headed back for the other half of the tank. The maroons has to act quickly to get a few choice morsels, and the eels were stunned to have so much to snack on. Currently (lol!), it makes a giant circular pattern. I don't really want it to flow toward the front of the tank, but if it does, it does. I'll drop in some flake food so you can see the flow in my next video.
 
Thanks for clearing that up Serk..I get it now. I think I could accomplish the same thing in a few lines of perl and a hook to /dev/random. I just might have to get some x10 gear and give it a try! :)
 
Here's the video so you can see the flow:

http://www.melevsreef.com/video/mj_mod_flow.wmv (5 megs)
 
Ive had a mag 900 and a mag 1200 one a natural wave multicycle timer for some time modified like this and they are constantly changing direction of flow. I had a closed loop with a sqwd and a mag7 on it but the power heads modified create better circulation so I took the Closed loop out. I have the timer set on 20 seconds, so it really changes alot.
 
cool stuff, but why oh why did you use that S*&%#@ song on your video? ughhhh my ears bleed.

You could have used House of Love-Flow (early 90's British Band that Coldplay have ripped off to become famous) or Ziggy Marley-Into the flow or if you want a mainstream song you could have used Pearl Jam's Even flow. Highway to the Dangerzone? *I just puked in my mouth*
 
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