spacedcowboy
Community Member
So I noticed (a few days ago) that there was some water on the floor in the fish room. Such a simple sentence, but one that sends a shiver up my spine even now...
We'd been having, unaccountably for Northern CA, a few days of genuine rainfall. We got to witness this 'water falling from the sky' thing that the ancient stories tell of, and the air "felt damp". I put the wet floor down to a pretty minimal humidity-removal system (a bathroom extractor fan) in a small "fish room" (about 5' by 8' floor area) in an atypically humid period of time, mopped up the wet patch and moved on.
The next day, there was more; quite a bit more. I went from mopping to moping. The main water circuit in my tank is pretty minimal - there's the tank, a drain, the sump, and a return pump - no closed loop or anything like that. I ran my hands over the piping and couldn't find any wetness. I felt along the walls and there was a damp (ish) patch immediately above the separate quarantine tank, which has a power-filter on it for circulation and aeration. My system pumps 1 gallon of water out of the sump and replaces it with 1 gallon of NSW 20 times per day, and the 1 gallon of "old" tank water goes into the quarantine tank via an air gap. That way I keep the quarantine tank parameters pretty much spot-on to the main tank, but there's no facility for medication to get back into the tank.
All this pumping was a prime suspect, but it had already checked out - all the piping looked good . I was left wondering if there could be sufficient splashing going on in the QT that the condensation was dripping down the wall (given the humidity had just gone up) and pooling on the floor. It seemed ... unlikely ... (the wall wasn't that wet) but in my mind at the time it was either that or there was a leak in either the 350G in-wall tank or the 50G sump underneath it. Neither of those alternatives were great. In fact they were pretty far from great.
So, more mopping - and to be clear, the geometry of the fish room doesn't make this easy.... and I switched off the power-filter, and stopped the water-change for a day to see if that made a difference.
Came in yesterday and the floor is soaking wet. [sigh] <depression sets in>
As I'm contemplating the momentousness of the situation, the DOS kicked in, and started adding water to the kalkwasser stirrer sitting at the side of the sump, and configured to drip kalk into the sump via gravity. I happened to bend down to check it was dripping, since it's rare I'm in the room when the kalk-addition is actually happening. Bingo! The (1/2" !!) tube extending over the tank is blocked at the end with whatever-it-is-that-kalk-solidifies-into, so no kalk is being added, the RODI water is being pushed into the stirrer by the DOS, and the "water" on the floor is actually all from the kalk-stirrer overflowing.
This morning the floor is dry again. So:
We'd been having, unaccountably for Northern CA, a few days of genuine rainfall. We got to witness this 'water falling from the sky' thing that the ancient stories tell of, and the air "felt damp". I put the wet floor down to a pretty minimal humidity-removal system (a bathroom extractor fan) in a small "fish room" (about 5' by 8' floor area) in an atypically humid period of time, mopped up the wet patch and moved on.
The next day, there was more; quite a bit more. I went from mopping to moping. The main water circuit in my tank is pretty minimal - there's the tank, a drain, the sump, and a return pump - no closed loop or anything like that. I ran my hands over the piping and couldn't find any wetness. I felt along the walls and there was a damp (ish) patch immediately above the separate quarantine tank, which has a power-filter on it for circulation and aeration. My system pumps 1 gallon of water out of the sump and replaces it with 1 gallon of NSW 20 times per day, and the 1 gallon of "old" tank water goes into the quarantine tank via an air gap. That way I keep the quarantine tank parameters pretty much spot-on to the main tank, but there's no facility for medication to get back into the tank.
All this pumping was a prime suspect, but it had already checked out - all the piping looked good . I was left wondering if there could be sufficient splashing going on in the QT that the condensation was dripping down the wall (given the humidity had just gone up) and pooling on the floor. It seemed ... unlikely ... (the wall wasn't that wet) but in my mind at the time it was either that or there was a leak in either the 350G in-wall tank or the 50G sump underneath it. Neither of those alternatives were great. In fact they were pretty far from great.
So, more mopping - and to be clear, the geometry of the fish room doesn't make this easy.... and I switched off the power-filter, and stopped the water-change for a day to see if that made a difference.
Came in yesterday and the floor is soaking wet. [sigh] <depression sets in>
As I'm contemplating the momentousness of the situation, the DOS kicked in, and started adding water to the kalkwasser stirrer sitting at the side of the sump, and configured to drip kalk into the sump via gravity. I happened to bend down to check it was dripping, since it's rare I'm in the room when the kalk-addition is actually happening. Bingo! The (1/2" !!) tube extending over the tank is blocked at the end with whatever-it-is-that-kalk-solidifies-into, so no kalk is being added, the RODI water is being pushed into the stirrer by the DOS, and the "water" on the floor is actually all from the kalk-stirrer overflowing.
This morning the floor is dry again. So:
- There's no leak in either the tank or the sump. I can't begin to describe my relief about that
- It's an easy fix (just unblock the tube) and a float-switch seems to be a good idea in future. Certainly one more thing to monitor in future.
- It's always the last thing you'd think of. Which I understand is inevitable, but because my mind had jumped to "water on the floor" I wasn't looking for any other liquids...
