Tank shut down last night! Long whining post...

[scolley]

Most Wednesdays I got to dinner with my family "“ last night no exception. So after a lovely meal, and feeling good after a couple of drafts, I was startled from y good spirit by my son's query,

"œDad, why won't the TV turn on?"

"I dunno"¦ I'll check the circuit breakers."

Nope, not that. Looking around"¦ my 180g looks good. Hey! There's no light on my nano reef tank! Hey there's NO power to it! :eek2:

And a quick look at my sump shows more water in it than it's ever had. Huh? How can it have more water than when I turn off my return pump? That makes no sense"¦

And thus began my multi-hour journey.

Turns out the GFI was tripped, and resetting it tripped it again. Every time. So I began the process of unplugging components. With every component unplugged, the GFI still tripped. Huh? That makes no sense.
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There's a high gauge extension cord running to the back of my stand, and various power strips in the stand that plug into that extension cord "“ behind the stand. And with the GFI still tripping with nothing plugged in, I had to assume there was something going on behind the stand where the powerstrips plugged into the extension cord. They are on a hook, with drip loops, up off the floor. But there was no way to get to them without moving the stand. Crap!

That meant draining the sump, and draining the tank of all but a few gallons of water.

Did that and found the extension cord soaking wet, with water down in the socket "“ shorting. How did all that water get back there? And that's when I noticed the big siphon breaking bubble in the top of my overflow's u-tube. Crap!

Well, at least I know what happened "“ Bubbles build up in u-tube. Siphon breaks. Tank overflows. Shorts out all electricity rather quickly, saving me from gallons of water on the floor, and a burned out return pump.

So I dried stuff off, fill up the tank and sump. Plug EVERYTHING back in to ensure proper function. And then empty sump and tank AGAIN, to push the working setup back. And refill sump and tank AGAIN. With everything working.

Now it get's even better"¦ once I filled the tank and sump back up for the last time, filled to their normal levels, I had lots of water left over. This is consistent with my initial observation that the sump had more water than I'd ever seen. But why? Simple"¦

The drain stops working because of the siphon-less u-tube. Return keeps pumping water into the tank. ATO water level switch connected to the sump sees a low water condition, and starts pumping in RO/DO. So now low-salinity water's being pumped into the tank by the return. Until of course the electrical short happens.

A quick test shows my normal salinity of 1.025 is now 1.0215. Crap.

This is a new experience for me, being a reef newbie. And frankly a sump newbie too. All my prior experience has been with advanced closed loop systems.

 

[scolley]

So what did I learn?

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1. Don't put ANYTHING behind the stand that you cannot get to without moving the stand. If this had happened on my 180g, it would have been bad. Real bad.
2. Overflows suck. I had an airlifter on it for a while, but those things aren't the most reliable, so I opted to try to "œoptimize" the u-tube diameter with the return rate to make the flow so fast that bubbles can't accumulate "“ they just blow on through. Clearly something went wrong. It WAS dusted in algae. Maybe that was a factor. Once I tear down this tank, I'm drilling bulkheads. And in the interim I'll just have to do a weekly check on the u-tube, making sure it's clean with no bubbles accumulating.
3. It's a good thing I've got an Ozmolator. Most other ATO's would have kept on pumping fresh water until the cows come home. But the Ozmolator will only pump for 10 minutes before it shuts itself down "“ assuming something is wrong. Having a Nano, that 10 minutes was enough fresh water to drop my salinity by 0.0035.
4. Battery backups for circulation pumps are a good investment. With all the power gone, my little Vortech MP10 kept whirring happily along on its battery. Warmed the cockles of my heart, and made me feel much better about shelling out that do-ray-me.
5. I was lucky. Lucky I learned this now before I set up my 180g. Lucky my electronics shorted quickly, before the pump burned out.

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This is EXACTLY why I started with a little 29g before I converted my 180g to a reef. Not only have I been learning about reef keeping, I've been learning about using sumps too. This just reinforces my belief that you should NEVER do a big hard thing (like setting up a 180g reef) without validating your concepts and learning on a smaller scale.

Live and learn.

Or maybe it's "œreef keep" and learn.

 

[RTMA]

Hey Steve, sorry to hear about your mis-adventure. Hope your livestock is ok. This happened to me once, but it was worse, it dumped about 2 gallons of kalk into my sump. It happened the night before I was going to migrate everything to the 75...the overflow made me do it earlier. I also vowed to not use kalk in my top off anymore. I'd rather deal with low salinity then a ph of 12.

Good lessons learned there. Let me know if you want to do a glass-holes style overflow, I have the 1 1/2" bits to drill the glass-holes overflow and a 1/2" return bulkhead with locline you can have (i have the bit for this hole also). If you are brave we could do it half full..it can be done, slowly.

Good luck and let me know if you need anything.

 

[RTMA]

Aslo note to anyone reading this...GFCI (like a moving buddy). Don't have one...get one!

 

[scolley]

Aslo note to anyone reading this...GFCI (like a moving buddy). Don't have one...get one!

Thanks Joe!

Fortunately this was on a GFCI. Would have been mucho scary if I hadn't!

As it was the water on the cord connections tripped the circuit. If that hadn't happened... God forbid!

Needless to say there was some water on the floor. Not much, but that little puddle could have been lethal. If not for me on rubber soled shoes, then for my dog Buddy or one of my cats!

Yes! TheRe is NO excuse for not putting everything near our wet systems on GFCI's! Great point. Right on target!

 

[terahz]

Sorry to read about your problem Steve, but I'm happy your tank is ok.
Any casualties ? Looks like the GFCI saved the day (and the house).

My next tank will have a coast to coast overflow using the 3 pipe drain (the silent and fail-safe design that floats in the DIY forum).

 

[rjinct]

Thanks Joe!

Yes! TheRe is NO excuse for not putting everything near our wet systems on GFCI's! Great point. Right on target!

I've been putting it off, but I need to do it ASAP/Today and get a GFCI on my QT tank in the basement. I shouldn't need a push like this...but it helped!

Hope all the 'stock is ok.

 

[scolley]

Ya know... it's amusing. This has been a good learning experience for me. A little tough on a few a my corals though.

Between being out of water for a couple of hours, and a rapid salinity drop from 1.025 to 1.021, a few of the corals are looking a bit worse for wear. My beautiful bubble coral is not happy, and one really nice zoa colony, and my neon green clove polyps are all looking decidedly unhappy. Which is to say... most stuff looks fine. So if that's the worst, I'm pretty lucky.

And some of the unhappiness could be due to the continued low salinity... rather than drastic measures to bring it back up, I've set my ATO to top off with salt rather than RO/DI. That's bringing things up at a pace of about .0005 per day.

I'm an animal with bulk-headed, closed loop systems, but sumps are new to me. And I've NEVER been comfortable with that overflow. Starting out, I figured that was something I needed to learn about too. So now I've learned - avoid siphon based overflows like the plague.

But at least my knowing that a GFCI was essential carried over from my knowledge of other types of aquaria.

The bottom line is... no matter how well you plan and design, sh*t happens. And around wet, electricity conducting salt water systems, GFCI's are a MUST have.

Thanks for concern. Most of the livestock is fine, and ALL of it survived. I guess corals are a little tougher than they often get credit for.

One more lesson learned.