ELynn
New Member
So I come home after a busy shift to the smell of burning, and my return pump making the low water level noise. My stomach immediately dropped. I opened up my sump to find no water, my ATO empty and my two heaters sitting in air having already melted through the plastic holders.
I shut everything off and tore apart my sump looking for a leak and I could not pin it, everything looked fine… I was stumped.. until I picked up the cheap little aerator the moves my cheato in my refugium.
It was inundated with water, and it hit me.. somehow though the pump was still on the aerator failed, and with my refugium built above my sump I had placed the aerator below the refugium, which somehow created a back siphon and within the span of 10 h managed to dump approximately 40+ gallon of water on to my floor which went right into the basement.
Of all the redundancies I’ve put on this tank to prevent leaks, to be felled by a 20 dollar aerator just hurts. I’ve now learned an important lesson.. no matter what it is, no matter how impossible it seems… ALWAYS PUT A CHECK VALVE!
Now I’m trying to figure out how to save my sub floor, how I’m going to safely return my salinity to 35 (it’s currently sitting at 31 after the auto dumped 20 gallons of fresh water in) and praying that non of my inverts or corals or even fish die, but I’m not hopeful.. it is currently two am and I’ve done everything I can until the morning. Any advice or similar stories would be appreciated, I’m feeling pretty miserable right now..
I shut everything off and tore apart my sump looking for a leak and I could not pin it, everything looked fine… I was stumped.. until I picked up the cheap little aerator the moves my cheato in my refugium.
It was inundated with water, and it hit me.. somehow though the pump was still on the aerator failed, and with my refugium built above my sump I had placed the aerator below the refugium, which somehow created a back siphon and within the span of 10 h managed to dump approximately 40+ gallon of water on to my floor which went right into the basement.
Of all the redundancies I’ve put on this tank to prevent leaks, to be felled by a 20 dollar aerator just hurts. I’ve now learned an important lesson.. no matter what it is, no matter how impossible it seems… ALWAYS PUT A CHECK VALVE!
Now I’m trying to figure out how to save my sub floor, how I’m going to safely return my salinity to 35 (it’s currently sitting at 31 after the auto dumped 20 gallons of fresh water in) and praying that non of my inverts or corals or even fish die, but I’m not hopeful.. it is currently two am and I’ve done everything I can until the morning. Any advice or similar stories would be appreciated, I’m feeling pretty miserable right now..
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