Colin_S
Active Member
Where to start! This is a plumbing question lol, but i need to vent my frustration...
The last 2 years have been testing, some my own fault. Lately i've been spending soooo much time on the tank and money upgrading all my early efforts.
I will try and keep this post short, but what i've gone through in the last 2 years are: 1 year of extremely bad green hair algae, sorted that with a rodi upgrade system from 4 stage to 6. 2x Cyno (red slime) outbreak nearly a year between the 2, which was sorted with Chemi-clean. 2x Diatoms outbreak again about a year apart, currently dealing with it. I added Marine Pure Rock and removed a lot of live rock around the time the 2nd outbreak of Cyno and Diatom so i'm thinking part of the cycling process again...
I started the Triton method an added coral, i had a good 2 months lol, everyhing was growing, i test on average every 10 days and have a record of every test, as well as 2 triton tests, been running it for about 9 months now.
Everything was good, in the space of a month, through no fault, i had a wrasse die of what i believe to be internal parasite, and the day after my copperband got stuck on my power head over night, couldn't save either one of them despite buying HT and meds. i know this is part of the learning process but still very frustrating. I bought another Copperband and tried my hand at quarentine, bought all the equipment and meds, followed the process, but sadly failed, so i decided to stop, get better info and a better method and revisit once the tank is settled in early 2020 after my planned plumbing upgrades are complete. In the meantime contnue with adding Corals.
A couple of weeks after that, i bought a really good and healthy small Green bubble tip. it was dark green, took to the rock straight away and the tenticles were inflated, it looked happy, and so was i. Then about 5 days later, the GBT went inside a rock and died, i couldn't beleive it. I had continued with testng water params and nothing wrong. I've been feeding once a week with reef roids for about a month and everything was thriving untill the bi-colour hammer i had literally melted in front of me and died, then the pipe organ (i think it's that) has completely gone in and my Zoa's, one is not opening the the is doing ok. I narrowed it down to what i think but can not confirm was my dosing pumps. The triton magnesium is in 2 parts, and one of my pumps and stopped dosing, so it was only get 1 part mg. I sent of my trton sample after all this and nothing major was wrong.
Every bit of chaeto i have ever brought has died, which led me to buy a AI prime Fuge light,, guess what, it died!. i've put this down to lack of iron, and will sart dosing after my large water change & upgrades are complete.
So if i haven't bored you too much, thanks for sticking with it, here's where i am.
I am gearing up for a 70% water change, this opportunity will allow me to upgrade my plumbing. My 1st plumbing attempt worked but was messy. It was running as a full syphon, with the ball valves matching up with the return pump. But the way it was set up made maintenence and access very difficult.
My plan is to set up a 1.5 inch durso drain, that drains into a 2" reduced to 50mm drain with a gate valve. What keeps happening now is when i have the durso set up is, the section of my sump (90 litres) that houses my return pump (19 litres, 21 x 31 x 30cm) is doing a yoyo effect. The water level drops too low and sucks in a load of air, then after a few seconds the durso draws all the water down from the DT the section where the return pump fills right up then the return pump pumps it all back untill the water lever is too low again and starts sucking in loads of air, WHY?? My thought is that a durso will just drain what the return pump, pumps into the DT?
Another issue is the gate valve is fully open because when i tried to run it full syphon the amount of vibration and noise coming from the gatevalve as the water passed under it is a joke, way too noisy which it didn't do using ball valves! Also I do not have a overflow protection section, it never came with the tank. apart from stoping fish/snail etc getting sucked up is it important for the flow?
Maybe the sump is too small at 90 litres? 'm already thinking of upgrading the sump to a 218 litre one. My current one is made out of a old tank i had. it's ok but it needs improving.. another thing lol
If i can't sort the drainage then my last role of the dice is getting in a expert to see if they can sort it out, i need the tank to be silent.
This is what i mean about doing everything properly, not cutting corners and stuff like this keeps happening. I'm willing to try everything but it comes to a point where enough is a enough and i need a break or something easier or a complete fresh start. I want to enjoy the tank, and perfrom maintence without the stress of always having something big to sort out.. sorry for tha rant, and thanks for any ideas you have
The last 2 years have been testing, some my own fault. Lately i've been spending soooo much time on the tank and money upgrading all my early efforts.
I will try and keep this post short, but what i've gone through in the last 2 years are: 1 year of extremely bad green hair algae, sorted that with a rodi upgrade system from 4 stage to 6. 2x Cyno (red slime) outbreak nearly a year between the 2, which was sorted with Chemi-clean. 2x Diatoms outbreak again about a year apart, currently dealing with it. I added Marine Pure Rock and removed a lot of live rock around the time the 2nd outbreak of Cyno and Diatom so i'm thinking part of the cycling process again...
I started the Triton method an added coral, i had a good 2 months lol, everyhing was growing, i test on average every 10 days and have a record of every test, as well as 2 triton tests, been running it for about 9 months now.
Everything was good, in the space of a month, through no fault, i had a wrasse die of what i believe to be internal parasite, and the day after my copperband got stuck on my power head over night, couldn't save either one of them despite buying HT and meds. i know this is part of the learning process but still very frustrating. I bought another Copperband and tried my hand at quarentine, bought all the equipment and meds, followed the process, but sadly failed, so i decided to stop, get better info and a better method and revisit once the tank is settled in early 2020 after my planned plumbing upgrades are complete. In the meantime contnue with adding Corals.
A couple of weeks after that, i bought a really good and healthy small Green bubble tip. it was dark green, took to the rock straight away and the tenticles were inflated, it looked happy, and so was i. Then about 5 days later, the GBT went inside a rock and died, i couldn't beleive it. I had continued with testng water params and nothing wrong. I've been feeding once a week with reef roids for about a month and everything was thriving untill the bi-colour hammer i had literally melted in front of me and died, then the pipe organ (i think it's that) has completely gone in and my Zoa's, one is not opening the the is doing ok. I narrowed it down to what i think but can not confirm was my dosing pumps. The triton magnesium is in 2 parts, and one of my pumps and stopped dosing, so it was only get 1 part mg. I sent of my trton sample after all this and nothing major was wrong.
Every bit of chaeto i have ever brought has died, which led me to buy a AI prime Fuge light,, guess what, it died!. i've put this down to lack of iron, and will sart dosing after my large water change & upgrades are complete.
So if i haven't bored you too much, thanks for sticking with it, here's where i am.
I am gearing up for a 70% water change, this opportunity will allow me to upgrade my plumbing. My 1st plumbing attempt worked but was messy. It was running as a full syphon, with the ball valves matching up with the return pump. But the way it was set up made maintenence and access very difficult.
My plan is to set up a 1.5 inch durso drain, that drains into a 2" reduced to 50mm drain with a gate valve. What keeps happening now is when i have the durso set up is, the section of my sump (90 litres) that houses my return pump (19 litres, 21 x 31 x 30cm) is doing a yoyo effect. The water level drops too low and sucks in a load of air, then after a few seconds the durso draws all the water down from the DT the section where the return pump fills right up then the return pump pumps it all back untill the water lever is too low again and starts sucking in loads of air, WHY?? My thought is that a durso will just drain what the return pump, pumps into the DT?
Another issue is the gate valve is fully open because when i tried to run it full syphon the amount of vibration and noise coming from the gatevalve as the water passed under it is a joke, way too noisy which it didn't do using ball valves! Also I do not have a overflow protection section, it never came with the tank. apart from stoping fish/snail etc getting sucked up is it important for the flow?
Maybe the sump is too small at 90 litres? 'm already thinking of upgrading the sump to a 218 litre one. My current one is made out of a old tank i had. it's ok but it needs improving.. another thing lol
If i can't sort the drainage then my last role of the dice is getting in a expert to see if they can sort it out, i need the tank to be silent.
This is what i mean about doing everything properly, not cutting corners and stuff like this keeps happening. I'm willing to try everything but it comes to a point where enough is a enough and i need a break or something easier or a complete fresh start. I want to enjoy the tank, and perfrom maintence without the stress of always having something big to sort out.. sorry for tha rant, and thanks for any ideas you have
