Colored PVC for your tank

[mFrame]

Read a few articles on Reefbuilders about colored PVC for your tank recently. I can think of times when it would be useful. They link to Pimped Out Aquariums for the following, take a look:

This is schedule 40 colored PVC with a glossy finish, no printing. It's diameters from 1/2" to 2" with larger sizes available on request. It costs a little more than standard white or gray with blue and red 1" stock running aprox $2.70 per foot, with sections sold in 5' sections. Special order colors run about 20% more.

They also offer the sevice to bend your pvc pipe to avoid having all sorts of joints in your plumbing. That said, If you just HAVE to have colored joints you can follow this tutorial here, Not sure about "reef safeness"

[+brian.srock]

Hope your not redoing your plumbing in pink Mike.

[Dustin Pedretti]

I think you should go for pink mike...I'm +1ing that one

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[sifuentes31]

+2 also!! You'll be all the envy!!!

[mFrame]

I just think it would be awesome to have color coded pvc, though I really don't have that much. I have two hard pvc overflows feeding into the sump and a soft pvc return, but with some of the members here I can only imagine what they would do with colored pvc.

[flexpvc]

Thanks


The issue with the colored pipe is finding it and keeping it in stock.

You either have to put in a big order for it OR find some stuff left over from someone who did.

The prices are about the same, or a little more, as for the white glossy pipe.

Which is to say it's more expensive than the standard plumbing pipe by a margin.

We have looked into it, and right now there is not enough demand and we don't have a place to keep it. IT SCRATCHES VERY EASILY. So it has to be stored properly or you end up with a lot of very expensive trash.

As for the pipe and fish, it's a non-issue. No better or worse than standard pvc pipe, assuming it's made in the USA with virgin materials and no fillers.

Now, as for the staining of pvc fittings... THAT I would go with great caution. Stains usually have very aggressive VOCs.

We'd love to stock a couple of colors and fittings, but when you multiple all the different fittings people wants (Tee's, 90's 45', etc) and all the different sizes (1/2", 3/4", 1" 1.25", 1.5" and 2") you end up with a lot of stuff that sells very slowly. And stuff that sells slowly means stuff that gets damaged and is no longer sellable. :-( If the folks here could come up with a consensus on what size and color and what fittings they'd want, we'd consider stocking it.

[victoly]

Thanks

The issue with the colored pipe is finding it and keeping it in stock.

You either have to put in a big order for it OR find some stuff left over from someone who did.

The prices are about the same, or a little more, as for the white glossy pipe.

Which is to say it's more expensive than the standard plumbing pipe by a margin.

We have looked into it, and right now there is not enough demand and we don't have a place to keep it. IT SCRATCHES VERY EASILY. So it has to be stored properly or you end up with a lot of very expensive trash.

As for the pipe and fish, it's a non-issue. No better or worse than standard pvc pipe, assuming it's made in the USA with virgin materials and no fillers.

Now, as for the staining of pvc fittings... THAT I would go with great caution. Stains usually have very aggressive VOCs.

We'd love to stock a couple of colors and fittings, but when you multiple all the different fittings people wants (Tee's, 90's 45', etc) and all the different sizes (1/2", 3/4", 1" 1.25", 1.5" and 2") you end up with a lot of stuff that sells very slowly. And stuff that sells slowly means stuff that gets damaged and is no longer sellable. :-( If the folks here could come up with a consensus on what size and color and what fittings they'd want, we'd consider stocking it.

Good news about VOCs is, as a generality, they tend to volatilize and evaporate into the atmosphere rapidly.

[Planeden]

+2 also!! You'll be all the envy!!!

i guess we'd all be stuck with green.

groan, i know...couldn't help myself.

[sifuentes31]

I would perfer black myself. I'm sure lots of others would also...

[(Bio)³]

Yeah I'm gonna go order some pink.. err I mean black for my nano build

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[Dustin Pedretti]

Yeah I'm gonna go order some pink.. err I mean black for my nano build

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Haha!

I have normal pvc in mine that I painted black...it came out very uniform and looks nice now that my tanks been going for a while

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[mFrame]

Yeah I'm gonna go order some pink.. err I mean black for my nano build

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4

Haha!

I have normal pvc in mine that I painted black...it came out very uniform and looks nice now that my tanks been going for a while

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk 2

I used the Krylon fusion on mine but it does tend to scratch off fairly easily. The appeal to me would be having the color throughout the pipe.

It sounds like if there were enough interest we could arrange a group order through our sponsor FlexPVC. Thanks to them for chiming in!

[(Bio)³]

Yeah I'm gonna go order some pink.. err I mean black for my nano build

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4

Haha!

I have normal pvc in mine that I painted black...it came out very uniform and looks nice now that my tanks been going for a while

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk 2

I used the Krylon fusion on mine but it does tend to scratch off fairly easily. The appeal to me would be having the color throughout the pipe.

It sounds like if there were enough interest we could arrange a group order through our sponsor FlexPVC. Thanks to them for chiming in!

If I was still in ATX I'd love to get in on a group buy, I'll just paint mine for now and call it good. Or just let it encrust with coraline and forget about it.

[(Bio)³]

Also FLEXPVC mentioned that even this colored stuff scratches very easy. I might just stick with paint, atleast then I can repaint it if it scratched so much it annoyed me.

[flexpvc]

If you are painting pvc pipe, you need to use "primer for plastics." You generally can't find it at the local hardware store, you generally have to go to a professional automotive paint store, something like APS. But just look in the phone book for auto painting supply or call your favorite paint and body shop and ask them where they get their paint.

When you go there tell them you want primer for plastic. Prime your pipe with the primer and then paint over it. If you do it that way, it'll stay stuck much longer, even forever if handled correctly. Note: PVC pipe is made from oil That's why paint does not want to adhere to it. So by using a special primer that bonds to it, you will get a much more durable finish.

As for black, we have some black fittings in stock. (see http://flexpvc.com/cart/agora.cgi?keywords=black) We have plans to carrying black pipe in the future. But the black fittings have been selling pretty slow, so we are not in a hurry to stock the black pipe if it's going to just sit around and get scratched. :-( The price will be slightly higher than the white glossy pipe we carry. (http://pipe.flexpvc.com, line number 4). The issues is again storage. The black is even more susceptible to showing scratches so it has to be stored very carefully.

We'd love to stock it all, but there are space constraints and of course that's capital sitting on a shelf. If it's selling, it's creating revenue. :-) If it's just sitting there, it's wasting space and capital. :-(

Can people agree upon a size they would use? And maybe a couple of colors they'd actually consider buying? If we know it'll allow us to make an experiment. :-)

[victoly]

If I were in the market, I'd say probably 0.5-1.5" are going to bet the most common, with 0.75"/1" the standard. Blue/Red (influent/effluent)

[flexpvc]

If I were in the market, I'd say probably 0.5-1.5" are going to bet the most common, with 0.75"/1" the standard. Blue/Red (influent/effluent)

That's the problem. That's 4 sizes and 2 colors or 8 combinations. That's 8 pallets of pipe. Every 2 pallets takes up about the same floor space a car. So that means we'd have to find room for 4 cars to fit in the warehouse just to house it. :-) If we just did 2 sizes and 2 colors, I guarantee you we'd get 10 calls for the other sizes we didn't stock. ;-) (Murphy's Law of Internet Business.) Each pallet is thousands of feet. So we'd like to see demand for at least 1/4th of that before we could stock it. How many feet would you use of each color and size per project?.

BTW, the red/blue choice is a good one, because we have had others ask for those colors. And I think we'd rather have red or blue before black, however getting red/blue fittings would painful because we already have black that sells very slow.

Don't get me wrong, we'd love to do something like this. But I'm afraid we'd end up with a lot of pipe and fittings that were really slow movers. But if there is demand, we'd move to fulfill it.

[(Bio)³]

I'm gonna have to look into getting these for my store. My customers would use on average no less than 50 feet of each color in 1 inch and 1.25 inches.

Also why not just get pallet racks and store floor to ceiling? Saves a lot of space.

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[mFrame]

I'd think that you could order the blue/red pvc and use the black fittings with it, sounds like there's a package deal there waiting to be built to help you clear some stale inventory. Anyone here think they'd have to have matching fittings?

[(Bio)³]

If I'm going far enough to get color PVC I'd like my whole piping one color

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[flexpvc]

I'm gonna have to look into getting these for my store. My customers would use on average no less than 50 feet of each color in 1 inch and 1.25 inches.

Also why not just get pallet racks and store floor to ceiling? Saves a lot of space.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S4

So how much pipe would you order at one time? What size and color?

We do have pallet racks. Many. But it still takes up a lot of space. Our white is in massive pallet racks and just 1 color, 4 sizes takes up as much room as a car up to 9' tall We have to get ladder to get stuff off the top bin. .

[flexpvc]

I'd think that you could order the blue/red pvc and use the black fittings with it, sounds like there's a package deal there waiting to be built to help you clear some stale inventory. Anyone here think they'd have to have matching fittings?

There's no stale inventory here. it'd be a special order. We are trying to guage the interest in the product to see if something could be put together. If we can cover 25% by preorders we would likely cover the rest to stock.

I think the 1" and 1.25" is likely candidate, but 1.5" is also highly likely. Maybe we'd drop the 1" and just try 1.25" and 1.5" in red and blue and see how it goes. That's a 4 bin rack, and we'd have to find a place to fit that underroof. This stuff can't be stored outside.

But we'd wait awhile to see what kind of feedback we get.

Thanks.

[(Bio)³]

I'd probably grab about 500 ft of each to have available. I'm getting a building permit today so I'm still a ways out from sourcing this to hold in my shop

[flexpvc]

Okay, maybe about the time you have your building up we'll be ready to move forward. I'll send you a pm so you can contact us if you want to try this. If anyone else wants to get in on the deal, post here what size and color you are interested in and we'll take it into consideration. Thank you.