Yamaha1634
Active Member
Recently bought an AquaOne Mini Reef 180, 180l DT plus a 45l sump.
The tank came standard with a corner internal weir with a single 40mm Durso drain through the base of the tank and a 20mm return pipe. I quickly got bored of the noise of the durso so I changed the set up. I now have a strainer on the 40mm drain around 6inches below the water line, I have converted the 20mm hole to an emergency drain which sits around 1 inch above the water line in the weir and then I have run the return up and over the back of the tank. I was running this as a Herbie with a ball valve on the main drain but could never get the tank and sump levels to balance. I have a jebao dcw3500 return pump so I can adjust both the drain speed and the return flow but I'd sit for hours making tiny adjustments on the ball valve to try and balance the flow but could never get it quite right so last week I changed the ball valve for a gate valve thinking this would solve the problem!
So here's where I am now.
I turn on my return pump, only set to 20%, if I set it any higher the level in my weir sits too low compared to my DT and is too noisy. Then I open the gate valve slowly till its somewhere near balanced, I leave it for 15 minutes then come back and adjust as necessary. Before long it appears to be perfectly balanced and silent! HAPPY DAYS! but then around 24-36 hours later it always goes out of balance! The water level in the weir begins to drop while the water level in the sump remains the same. I have an ATO in the return pump chamber of the sump but all my evaporation appears to be showing itself in the DT and the weir rather than in the sump?!
Just to make things more confusing.... this morning I came down to find my DT water level super high and flowing through my emergency drain. Checked my sump and the water level in the sump was where it should be..... the ATO had dumped 20l of fresh water into the system! My flow/return had somehow gone slightly out of balance, despite being fine for 2 days since I last adjusted it. It was slowly raising the water level in the DT and the ATO was topping up the sump... now my ATO does have a cut out which should stop this but I can only guess the level in the sump was dropping so slowly that the ATO never noticed it as an issue and over many hours it pumped the whole container of RODI into the system.......
What am I doing wrong?!?
Converting to a Herbie was meant to make the system silent and easy to maintain but I'm having no end of issues and its really making me loose interest in the hobby! Looking at the fish/coral looses its appeal when every time I enter the room I have to spend an hour messing with the drain system!
Please Help!
The tank came standard with a corner internal weir with a single 40mm Durso drain through the base of the tank and a 20mm return pipe. I quickly got bored of the noise of the durso so I changed the set up. I now have a strainer on the 40mm drain around 6inches below the water line, I have converted the 20mm hole to an emergency drain which sits around 1 inch above the water line in the weir and then I have run the return up and over the back of the tank. I was running this as a Herbie with a ball valve on the main drain but could never get the tank and sump levels to balance. I have a jebao dcw3500 return pump so I can adjust both the drain speed and the return flow but I'd sit for hours making tiny adjustments on the ball valve to try and balance the flow but could never get it quite right so last week I changed the ball valve for a gate valve thinking this would solve the problem!
So here's where I am now.
I turn on my return pump, only set to 20%, if I set it any higher the level in my weir sits too low compared to my DT and is too noisy. Then I open the gate valve slowly till its somewhere near balanced, I leave it for 15 minutes then come back and adjust as necessary. Before long it appears to be perfectly balanced and silent! HAPPY DAYS! but then around 24-36 hours later it always goes out of balance! The water level in the weir begins to drop while the water level in the sump remains the same. I have an ATO in the return pump chamber of the sump but all my evaporation appears to be showing itself in the DT and the weir rather than in the sump?!
Just to make things more confusing.... this morning I came down to find my DT water level super high and flowing through my emergency drain. Checked my sump and the water level in the sump was where it should be..... the ATO had dumped 20l of fresh water into the system! My flow/return had somehow gone slightly out of balance, despite being fine for 2 days since I last adjusted it. It was slowly raising the water level in the DT and the ATO was topping up the sump... now my ATO does have a cut out which should stop this but I can only guess the level in the sump was dropping so slowly that the ATO never noticed it as an issue and over many hours it pumped the whole container of RODI into the system.......
What am I doing wrong?!?
Converting to a Herbie was meant to make the system silent and easy to maintain but I'm having no end of issues and its really making me loose interest in the hobby! Looking at the fish/coral looses its appeal when every time I enter the room I have to spend an hour messing with the drain system!
Please Help!
