Help?!?

[futureeyedoc]

So many of you have been following me talking about my new 33g long with 20g sump in the other thread I had about lights. Today I filled it with live sand and saltwater and started everything up.

However I'm running into a problem. The tank has 2 1" bulk heads drilled into the tank near the top. Inside the tank those bulk heads have 1" PVC 90's screwed in to raise the water level.

see here:

http://i332.photobucket.com/albums/m337/futureeyedoc/Saltwater aquarium pics/P7212972.jpg

The problem is that the overflows are draining too much water for the return pump ( catalina 4000) to handle!!!
I thought it was supposed to be that they basically would just drain whatever gph your return pump was pushing out????
So needless to say I took out the fish gaurds in that pic and put something else in there that slowed it down a little.... but the sump is still SLOWLY filling instead of staying at the same rate.

What they heck do I do other than buy a bigger return pump????

THANKS

 

[NicoleC]

It sounds like you have too much water in your system. Gravity drains can drain faster than your return pump, but only until the water level drops to the level of the drains, if that makes sense. At that point, there is no more water to flow into the drain and sump.

Fill your tank just up to the drains, but no to that any water flows down them. Then, fill the sump almost to the top. Finally, turn on your return pump.

This way, you won't have more water than your system can handle. You definitely don't want too much water -- then in a power outage you'll have a flood.

 

[JR's Reef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13015746#post13015746 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by NicoleC
It sounds like you have too much water in your system. Gravity drains can drain faster than your return pump, but only until the water level drops to the level of the drains, if that makes sense. At that point, there is no more water to flow into the drain and sump.

Fill your tank just up to the drains, but no to that any water flows down them. Then, fill the sump almost to the top. Finally, turn on your return pump.

This way, you won't have more water than your system can handle. You definitely don't want too much water -- then in a power outage you'll have a flood.

I agree. If you need to only use one drain you can put a short piece of pvc pipe in one just to raise it up a little maybe 1/4in and it could work as a back up if a snail or something stopped up the main drain

 

[futureeyedoc]

So for whatever reason it was doing that at first but seems to have leveled off now... Evaporating crazy quick though for something that hasn't hardly had the lights on yet!
My wife hates the toilet-bowl sound of the 2 overflows, not sure how I'm going to get them to stop making that sound????
And the stupid catalina 4000 is pumping so much its blowing all the sand around even with it pointed right at the surface.... guess its time for a "Y" and some loc-lines

 

[NicoleC]

You don't have real overflows so there is not much you can do about the noise. You can drop the outlet below the water level in the sump, which will help a little.