Faraday's Cage
New member
Hi,
I've been setting up a 55 gallon aquarium (for cuttlefish, but that's another story) with a 20 gallon refugium/sump. Naturally, I got an overflow box, the PF-Nano from Eshopps, which can handle 200 GPH. I'm using a 15-year old (but still totally functional), 150 GPH, Eheim 2015 canister filter. The PF-Nano came without a mating hose or pipe, so I ordered some parts from McMaster-Carr. After finding out that the threads on the PF-Nano are not NPT (national pipe thread), I simply epoxied in a barb adapter (McMaster #5372K155) that happened to fit inside the output tube. This worked fine for a day or two, but I was having substantial gurgling noises coming from the overflow box. I found out that I could suppress these sounds by putting a piece of filter sponge in the outflow area. After about a week, I decided to restructure my tank a little bit, and consequently I moved the overflow box about 20 inches to the left. After starting the overflow and filter back up, I watched the tank for a few minutes. That's when it started to overflow the first time. I removed the filter sponge and the water level in the overflow box went down and it drained normally. I then cleaned up the water and started up the system again but with a smaller piece of sponge. Again it overflowed, but this time when I removed the sponge an odd phenomenon occurred - despite having removed the blockage the water level in the overflow box was not going down! I did not find any other blockages in the tubing, so I must conclude that some kind of air embolism-like effect is occurring. I started the system up a third time - this time with a ball valve inline with the overflow return, and I adjusted the ball valve so that I could purge the air from the return tube and so that the water level in the overflow box is static. After about an hour, I purged the air again and reset the overflow box - I had accidentally opened the valve while working on the refugium. However, about an hour after that second purging, the tank began to overflow once again. I do not understand what is going wrong here. I might post up pictures soon.
Any help would be appreciated
Thanks,
FC
I've been setting up a 55 gallon aquarium (for cuttlefish, but that's another story) with a 20 gallon refugium/sump. Naturally, I got an overflow box, the PF-Nano from Eshopps, which can handle 200 GPH. I'm using a 15-year old (but still totally functional), 150 GPH, Eheim 2015 canister filter. The PF-Nano came without a mating hose or pipe, so I ordered some parts from McMaster-Carr. After finding out that the threads on the PF-Nano are not NPT (national pipe thread), I simply epoxied in a barb adapter (McMaster #5372K155) that happened to fit inside the output tube. This worked fine for a day or two, but I was having substantial gurgling noises coming from the overflow box. I found out that I could suppress these sounds by putting a piece of filter sponge in the outflow area. After about a week, I decided to restructure my tank a little bit, and consequently I moved the overflow box about 20 inches to the left. After starting the overflow and filter back up, I watched the tank for a few minutes. That's when it started to overflow the first time. I removed the filter sponge and the water level in the overflow box went down and it drained normally. I then cleaned up the water and started up the system again but with a smaller piece of sponge. Again it overflowed, but this time when I removed the sponge an odd phenomenon occurred - despite having removed the blockage the water level in the overflow box was not going down! I did not find any other blockages in the tubing, so I must conclude that some kind of air embolism-like effect is occurring. I started the system up a third time - this time with a ball valve inline with the overflow return, and I adjusted the ball valve so that I could purge the air from the return tube and so that the water level in the overflow box is static. After about an hour, I purged the air again and reset the overflow box - I had accidentally opened the valve while working on the refugium. However, about an hour after that second purging, the tank began to overflow once again. I do not understand what is going wrong here. I might post up pictures soon.
Any help would be appreciated
Thanks,
FC
