Edit: This post is not to compare or trash any tank manufacturer brand, please refrain to make comments on that line. I just want to show how a tank can be tweaked after a problem like this, so if any other member of the community has the same issue, they can try some of the solutions I did.
Cheers
Hello all!
It's been a while since I posted here but I have an interesting story about what happened to my tank on Thanksgiving Day:
We came back home from my brother-in-law dinner and as soon as I opened the door and heard the sound of water running my worst nightmare came alive, I rushed to the living room just to splash on a big pool of water, and as soon as I looked at my tank, I noticed a fine stream of water running form the middle low front of the tank, I rushed to find and clear a 5 gal bucket and place it under the stream as you can see on this video:
At the moment of the video the tank might had lost around 1/4 of the water around 15 gals. Now I found myself on Thanksgiving Day 8 PM with a leaking tank and nothing is open to be able to buy anything, I did not have a big brute tote and only a few 5-gals bucket, so I needed to think quick. As the 5-gal bucket was filling I was adding the water manually from the bucket to the DT, I also turned off everything on my apex less the 2 Vortech pumps and the sky light.
Digging into my garage I found a tube of aquarium safe silicone I used on my old 55 G freshwater tank I had a few years ago, since I did not have enough space to move all the rocks and the livestock, I decided to give a shot and try to plug the hole using the silicone, I thought it will not work because i was trying to plug running water with fresh silicone, but it worked I pushed a lot of silicone into the hole and was able to see how it filled the seam and the water slowing was slowing down until it did not leak anymore:
So, I decided to sleep in the couch that night to be able to hear if the tank was leaking again, but what woke me up at 3 AM was not the sound of water running but instead lots of electrical clicking noises, when I went to see what was going on the Apex controller was alternating all colors and resetting every minute or less same for the EB832, so the Vortech were turning on and off and the sky light too, I spent 1 hour trying to diagnose but was not able to find the issue and decided it was a next day problem, so I unplugged everything and plugged the 1 MP40 straight to the wall.
Next morning, I was surprised that the seam fix was still holding, so I focused on understanding what was going on with my apex, I dismantled all the electrical wiring and only left the Apex and the EB832, to my relief it started working again and was able to use the fusion, at least the apex was not damaged and after a few hours I identified that 1 of the USB cables between my FMM and the WXM was the issue, I removed the cable for a spare one I had and everything started working ok. Since the tank was bot leaking anymore, I tried to refill the tank to get the overflow and circulation pump working again... Very bad decision, as soon as I got around 1 gallon of water the seam started leaking again... so I removed the extra gallon from the DT and the leak reduced to a drip, I added more silicone and waited. In the meantime, I contacted the manufacturer support and noticed that a warranty claim would take at least 14 days to get me a replacement tank, so I had to decide between getting some brute totes and temporary build an emergency setup or try to make what I had work. So, I decided to go for the second option.
First, I wanted to re enable the recirculation pump, because I wanted to keep my sump and refuge alive, without circulation it will die and rot, Since the tank is a write off, I tried to drill the overflow to the new water level this way everything would have worked again, but the overflow box may be made with reinforced titanium because I was not able to make even a dent with drill, hammer drill, saw nothing worked, so I went for plan B, use siphon to transfer the water to the sump, I added a siphon between the DT and the overflow emergency drain:
This way I was able to turn the return pump on, but the flow was too low because of the diameter of the hose, so I added a second siphon:
I know what you are thinking, siphons are recipe for disaster I may drain the whole tank into the sump, but I got that covered because the tip of the siphons are only 1/10 of an inch under the water level, so if the return pump stops the siphon will break with only a few gallons transferred to the sump.
Now my next challenge came up, try to balance between the return pump and the supply to try keep a steady level on the sump, when we use the overflow the same amount of water that gets pumped into the DT returns to the sump, in my case this is not true because the siphon has a set flow that is not the same as the return pump, my pump is DC and I can control the speed but even there I was a little too fast and the sump was slowly draining or a little too slow and the sump was filling. So, I decided to use my ATO sensors and reprogram the return pump logic to do an on off control on the sump level, I set the speed a little faster than the siphons and when the level went lo it turned off to refill the sump chamber:
Next, I added a hose to the return nozzle to avoid the splashing sound:
So far everything is happy and working I hope the tank holds till a new one comes in, this is how it looks now:
Sorry for the dirty glass but I was having problems with too low nutrients and left it without cleaning for weeks, so my huge turbo snails have something to eat. Also, I have an asterina infestation that eat all my soft corals less than the GSP and the Palys...
Thanks for reading I have a few lessons learned from this experience that will not repeat on my next tank.
Cheers
Hello all!
It's been a while since I posted here but I have an interesting story about what happened to my tank on Thanksgiving Day:
We came back home from my brother-in-law dinner and as soon as I opened the door and heard the sound of water running my worst nightmare came alive, I rushed to the living room just to splash on a big pool of water, and as soon as I looked at my tank, I noticed a fine stream of water running form the middle low front of the tank, I rushed to find and clear a 5 gal bucket and place it under the stream as you can see on this video:
At the moment of the video the tank might had lost around 1/4 of the water around 15 gals. Now I found myself on Thanksgiving Day 8 PM with a leaking tank and nothing is open to be able to buy anything, I did not have a big brute tote and only a few 5-gals bucket, so I needed to think quick. As the 5-gal bucket was filling I was adding the water manually from the bucket to the DT, I also turned off everything on my apex less the 2 Vortech pumps and the sky light.
Digging into my garage I found a tube of aquarium safe silicone I used on my old 55 G freshwater tank I had a few years ago, since I did not have enough space to move all the rocks and the livestock, I decided to give a shot and try to plug the hole using the silicone, I thought it will not work because i was trying to plug running water with fresh silicone, but it worked I pushed a lot of silicone into the hole and was able to see how it filled the seam and the water slowing was slowing down until it did not leak anymore:
So, I decided to sleep in the couch that night to be able to hear if the tank was leaking again, but what woke me up at 3 AM was not the sound of water running but instead lots of electrical clicking noises, when I went to see what was going on the Apex controller was alternating all colors and resetting every minute or less same for the EB832, so the Vortech were turning on and off and the sky light too, I spent 1 hour trying to diagnose but was not able to find the issue and decided it was a next day problem, so I unplugged everything and plugged the 1 MP40 straight to the wall.
Next morning, I was surprised that the seam fix was still holding, so I focused on understanding what was going on with my apex, I dismantled all the electrical wiring and only left the Apex and the EB832, to my relief it started working again and was able to use the fusion, at least the apex was not damaged and after a few hours I identified that 1 of the USB cables between my FMM and the WXM was the issue, I removed the cable for a spare one I had and everything started working ok. Since the tank was bot leaking anymore, I tried to refill the tank to get the overflow and circulation pump working again... Very bad decision, as soon as I got around 1 gallon of water the seam started leaking again... so I removed the extra gallon from the DT and the leak reduced to a drip, I added more silicone and waited. In the meantime, I contacted the manufacturer support and noticed that a warranty claim would take at least 14 days to get me a replacement tank, so I had to decide between getting some brute totes and temporary build an emergency setup or try to make what I had work. So, I decided to go for the second option.
First, I wanted to re enable the recirculation pump, because I wanted to keep my sump and refuge alive, without circulation it will die and rot, Since the tank is a write off, I tried to drill the overflow to the new water level this way everything would have worked again, but the overflow box may be made with reinforced titanium because I was not able to make even a dent with drill, hammer drill, saw nothing worked, so I went for plan B, use siphon to transfer the water to the sump, I added a siphon between the DT and the overflow emergency drain:
This way I was able to turn the return pump on, but the flow was too low because of the diameter of the hose, so I added a second siphon:
I know what you are thinking, siphons are recipe for disaster I may drain the whole tank into the sump, but I got that covered because the tip of the siphons are only 1/10 of an inch under the water level, so if the return pump stops the siphon will break with only a few gallons transferred to the sump.
Now my next challenge came up, try to balance between the return pump and the supply to try keep a steady level on the sump, when we use the overflow the same amount of water that gets pumped into the DT returns to the sump, in my case this is not true because the siphon has a set flow that is not the same as the return pump, my pump is DC and I can control the speed but even there I was a little too fast and the sump was slowly draining or a little too slow and the sump was filling. So, I decided to use my ATO sensors and reprogram the return pump logic to do an on off control on the sump level, I set the speed a little faster than the siphons and when the level went lo it turned off to refill the sump chamber:
Next, I added a hose to the return nozzle to avoid the splashing sound:
So far everything is happy and working I hope the tank holds till a new one comes in, this is how it looks now:
Sorry for the dirty glass but I was having problems with too low nutrients and left it without cleaning for weeks, so my huge turbo snails have something to eat. Also, I have an asterina infestation that eat all my soft corals less than the GSP and the Palys...
Thanks for reading I have a few lessons learned from this experience that will not repeat on my next tank.
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