Yesterday morning was an interesting morning.. I never really have problems with my tank but yesterday was the rare exception. In fact, it's been many years since I had an issue. I came down early and around 8 AM and was sitting on the couch when I got a text from my Apex notifying me of high salinity so I went to investigate an noted on the display that I had a reading in the 50's. This is WAY out of line considering that normal is around 32.7 or something. Initially I thought the probe may have failed but I opened the doors below the tank to investigate further. Much to my horror, there was standing water over 2" deep around the outside of the sumps filling the entire 4' x 8' space below the tank. Fortunately I have a pond liner below the tank to contain water.
Initially I flat out panicked.. Like a chicken without a head, I ran to my fish shed outside looking for my sump pump. Having forgot where I had it, more panic ensued when I couldn't find the damn pump on one of my shelfs. Back to the house I ran and looked all over then back to the shed to find it on the rack of the door where I normally keep it. I grabbed the pump and hose and set it up in a spot below the tank and pumped the water out. First I thought it was a serious leak and thoughts like bulk head leak or worse, split or cracked sump ran through my mind. I have an ATO and as the water level would drop in my sump, it was replaced by RODI water...
While the water was being pumped out of the pond liner below the tank, I spotted the issue... My skimmer was overflowing and must have overflowed sometime the night before. Normally this wouldn't be an issue. While I have my sumps covered, the covers are cut out around the skimmer and on the very rare occasion that it's overflowed, the water normally drains right back into the sump. This time that wasn't the case. The lids must have been on their weird and instead it drained to the perimeter of the cover and out onto the floor around the tank..
Once I got things under control and calmed down after realizing that it was a minor issue and not a leak, I went outside and noted that the RODI tank was down about 20 gallons of water which meant I had lost 20 or so gallons below the tank. THANK GOD for the pond liner which contained almost everything. I do have two holes in my walls below the tank about 2" off the ground where plumbing passes through so a little bit of water made it into the adjacent fish closet through those holes but it wasn't a big deal. My tile floors run up to the closet but not inside so the water was contained to the floor in the closet and didn't pass over the 1/4" lip where the tiles meet the closet. Had I not had that liner, I would have had water all over my floors around the tank and would likely have had some water damage to the lower freshly painted walls around my tank.
Another thing that could have been MUCH worse.. I run external pumps which are located under the display. I recently switched from a pair of Dart Supergolds to a pair of Royal Exclusiv RD3 230's which are also setup externally but unlike the Reeflo Dart's the RD3's are submersible so no issues there. Had I been running the Dart's, those pumps would have been a mess or worse, ruined due to submersion.
Needless to say, I got the water drained from under the display using the sump pump. Used towels to mop up the remaining water and set a fan to dry things off. Within an hour, everything was back to normal and pretty much cleaned up. I then took some time to clean the skimmer pump and collection cup. I think the cause of the overflow was salt creep in the venturi line because I didn't find a snail in there. It had been 4 or more months since I cleaned that pump last. Note to self: Clean the damn skimmer pump more often or at the very least, remove the nozzle and clean the venturi input. I also dumped some salt in one of my filter socks to raise the salinity a little bit. 20 or so gallons of fresh water in a 650 gallon system won't make much of a difference in salinity but it needed to be raised slightly as I figured it probably dropped by .001 to .002. Not a big deal at all and a simple fix.
As a side note. I do run leak detection with my Apex but I set it up long before Neptune had their leak detection module out. I use a product called the Water Bug which connects to my breakout box. It had false alarmed on me a year or so back probably because of conductivity in the concrete in the closet next to the tank. I have a sensor there as well as below the tank and also in the fish shed outside. When it false alarmed, I shut the virtual outlet off that was associated with leak detection and never turned it back on.. Duh!!! In leu of what happened yesterday and given the Black Friday sales, I opted to order a new Apex leak detection module along with 3 sensors from Premium Aquatics. That will arrive next week.
Apparently, the wire for the salinity probe (which run across the floor below the tank) being submersed cause the the probe to go nuts. I did have one extension cord in the closet that was on the floor get wet. I suspect that may have caused a bit of stray voltage which impacted that probe. Needless to say, had I not received that text notification from my Apex, it might have been a couple more hours and a couple more gallons before I realized I had an issue.
Take aways from this..
First: It's good to be prepared and level headed.
Second: Thank God for the Apex
Third: Thank God for the Pond Liner below the tank
Fourth: Leak detection is VERY important.
Fifth: I need to stay on top of my skimmer pump maintenance more.
Sixth: I need to drill some holes in my sump lids around the skimmer so there is more places for water to drain into the sump.
Seventh and more of a side note: It would be nice to have a float switch in the collection cup that would shut the skimmer down if the level was too high. The issue with that is I have a wash down in the lid which would get in the way of the switch. The tube for the wash down runs just directly under the vent holes in the lid so I can't just mount a switch to the vent hole. I played around with the lid and a float switch yesterday using a piece of rigid tubing as a mount point but it really put the float too low in the cup. I need to make a mount that attaches to a hole in the lid but positions the switch just below the wash down. It needs to be bent to clear the wash down tube and center the float switch so that the sides of the collection cup don't interfere with the switch. Kind of a pain with my particular self cleaning lid and it's built in collection cup wash down. I could add a horizontal float switch to the side of the collection cup but don't want to drill holes in my collection cup so that is out of the question. On the flip side, in 5 years, I have never had this kind of an issue with the rare overflow as it's always drained back into the sump. As such, I'am probably worrying over nothing and holes in the sump cover would prevent this from happening again. Those holes will be drilled today. The again, you can never be too prepared in this hobby and there is always something else to worry about or do as a preventive measure so I will likely come up with a clean way to add a switch to the cup.
You can see the wash down here and sump cover here.
