Un-Plumbing a Sump

[RobberyinCSharp1824]

I am just wondering if anyone has any experience with undoing a plumb on a sump and re-plumbing it? I paid someone to do the plumbing and I don't think they did a very good job. Every single time I do a water change I now have to degass the lines and I am never able to balance out the return chamber to the drain. He bought an OTS pipe and it's way too long, so there's a kink at the top that I believe is creating back-pressure and air bubble resistance.

I'm beyond fed up trying to deal with this. Every single time I have to do a water change I have to deal with a water level swing nightmare and I'm ready to smash my sump to pieces. The return chamber in my sump runs dry and triggers my ATO which ends up draining my ATO reservoir and plummets my salinity, or it overflows the return chamber and the ATO alarm goes off. This time, it's decided to both at varying points of the day - and for whatever [expletive] reason, the DT water level just ended up so high that it nearly overflowed out of my display.

I want to start fresh with a hard plumb and a less hacked-together setup. Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Saltyreef]

Pics of your setup?

 

[lapin]

Go for it. It will not hurt the tank to be without a pump for a few hours
Draw it out how you want it. Get the parts. Dry fit them to be sure it fits.
Avoid 90 degree fittings on the drain if you can

 

[RobberyinCSharp1824]

Pics of your setup?

 

[RobberyinCSharp1824]

Go for it. It will not hurt the tank to be without a pump for a few hours
Draw it out how you want it. Get the parts. Dry fit them to be sure it fits.
Avoid 90 degree fittings on the drain if you can

How do I remove stuff that was glued?

 

[Saltyreef]

How do I remove stuff that was glued?

so your main issue here is the CPR overflow.
the water level is TOO high and honestly, kinda scary and asking for a flood.

it needs to cascade as shown here.
you may be pumping too much back into your display, or the drain is restricted and not allowing the air to escape.
do you have a DC adjustable pump?

this could be remedied without replumbing possibly.
can you get a shot of where the pipes terminate into the sump?

 

[RobberyinCSharp1824]

so your main issue here is the CPR overflow.
the water level is TOO high and honestly, kinda scary and asking for a flood.

it needs to cascade as shown here.
you may be pumping too much back into your display, or the drain is restricted and not allowing the air to escape.
do you have a DC adjustable pump?

this could be remedied without replumbing possibly.
can you get a shot of where the pipes terminate into the sump?

Of course! I tried draining the DT thinking there was too much water and it wasn't allowing that cascade. I have a reef octopus DC pump but it's on the lowest setting. I haven't had an issue this bad before with drain / return ratio, but for some reason it's out of control...

As you can see, that bend causes a ton of back pressure from air

 

[Saltyreef]

Ok there it is.


That drain is effectively a Ptrap. Holding air.

Get a 1ft to 2ft shorter eshopps hose, and 2, 1" couplers.
Cut the white pvc sections flush @ the hose with a hacksaw, glue couplers in place onto white stubs and then glue hose into the couplers.

This should fix your drain issue.

 

[Saltyreef]

Eshopps 2ft. X 1" Flex Hose | Premium Aquatics

Aquarium & Fish Supplies Superstore. Guaranteed Low Prices. Free Shipping for qualified orders. Aquarium supply for your aquarium fish, saltwater aquariums, freshwater aquariums and ponds. The best aquarium lighting, protein skimmers, aquarium chillers, calcium reactors, aquarium pumps for fish...

premiumaquatics.com

Flex Hose 3' x 1" - Eshopps

Shop The Best Saltwater Aquarium Equipment & Supplies at Saltwater Aquarium. We Carry Everything you will Need for your Fish Tank.

www.saltwateraquarium.com

Heres a 2 and 3 ft

 

[Saltyreef]

Also, do the same with the return. It looks like the return is p traped too.

Then let your plumber know his errors

 

[RobberyinCSharp1824]

Also, do the same with the return. It looks like the return is p traped too.

Then let your plumber know his errors

Thank you! Out of curiosity, is there any way to do so without cutting the PVC? I only say this because there isn't much wiggle room by the sump, so I don't want to be SOL if I do something wrong or something needs maintenance.

I was also considering putting a 45* hard plumb at the drain entering the sump to reduce the risk of trapping air, but I suppose flex tubing would probably accommodate better at getting rid of any air that built up.

 

[RobberyinCSharp1824]

so your main issue here is the CPR overflow.
the water level is TOO high and honestly, kinda scary and asking for a flood.

it needs to cascade as shown here.
you may be pumping too much back into your display, or the drain is restricted and not allowing the air to escape.
do you have a DC adjustable pump?

this could be remedied without replumbing possibly.
can you get a shot of where the pipes terminate into the sump?

Also, I drained a significant amount of water out of my tank to try and ensure that the CPR overflow is cascading. It's improved, but now the return pump rapidly depletes <2min the return. How can I match the flow so I can get the sump running again?

 

[Montiman]

Your goal should not be to match the drain and return lines. the drain line always needs to be able to handle more than the return line. Once the hose is fixed so it does not drop below the level of the exit this will help a lot.

The water level should not effect how the overflow box performs.

If you are trying to match the flow for noise just don't. You are risking a flood. There are other ways of quieting the overflow.

What size return pump do you have?

 

[Saltyreef]

Also, I drained a significant amount of water out of my tank to try and ensure that the CPR overflow is cascading. It's improved, but now the return pump rapidly depletes <2min the return. How can I match the flow so I can get the sump running again?

You can hard plumb too. No waiting for hoses. Just make the run all down hill.

The return pump is what size?
It may be too big.

 

[Saltyreef]

Also, in the meantime, You can try lifting the sagging section of the hose so its fixed like this and all running downhill.
I did the same thing with my first tank as i had this same issue with the same hoses.

Just used some picture frame wire to hang it from thumb tacs.

 

[RobberyinCSharp1824]

Your goal should not be to match the drain and return lines. the drain line always needs to be able to handle more than the return line. Once the hose is fixed so it does not drop below the level of the exit this will help a lot.

The water level should not effect how the overflow box performs.

If you are trying to match the flow for noise just don't. You are risking a flood. There are other ways of quieting the overflow.

What size return pump do you have?

How do I allow the drain to handle more without causing my ATO overflow alarm to trigger? This has been a huge problem and because of it, I am probably in the 1% of people that absolutely hates my Tunze ATO.

You can hard plumb too. No waiting for hoses. Just make the run all down hill.

The return pump is what size?
It may be too big.

When I bought the pump I planned to mitigate backpressure for a hard plumb - my guy showed up with soft plumbing and then told me I don't actually want a hard plumb because it was too noisy. Since this is my first tank with a sump, I trusted him (that was clearly stupid). It's a Reef Octopus VarioS6. The math from a hard plumb worked out just fine but it is definitely proving to be too much without enough water. I only run it in Eco mode. The only other thing I can think of is beefing up the CPR overflow, which I believe is designed to max out at my aquarium size (120).

 

[Montiman]

For a single 1in non full syphon drain you can't really push more than 600 gallons per hour through the drain safely. This is still cycling your entire tank 4 times per hour which is plenty. I believe your pump is just way over sized which is part of the problem. You can turn the pump way down.

 

[RobberyinCSharp1824]

For a single 1in non full syphon drain you can't really push more than 600 gallons per hour through the drain safely. This is still cycling your entire tank 4 times per hour which is plenty. I believe your pump is just way over sized which is part of the problem. You can turn the pump way down.

The pump is at its lowest setting surprise, he did the same crap to my return pump :

I really don't want to buy another pump if possible unless I can ensure that I can recoup the money because this was a $320 pump. Any possibility of this?

 

[Montiman]

I would fix the plumbing first and then evaluate the pump.

 

[homer1475]

Wow that is just plain shoddy craftsmanship. I would be calling that guy and giving him a piece of my mind, and I would not be nice about it! If he's a professional installer and he left it that way........ The comment about hard plumbing causing more noise then corrugated alone would have me throwing him out of my house! Thats common sense! Something with corrugations will cause water to fall and trap air in the corrugations, where as hard piping is smooth and water travels through it smoothly.

The nerve of some people these days and what they call craftsmanship is beyond incomprehensible!

I would cut out all that corrugated pipe(causes air to be trapped in the corrugations), and just hard plumb it without the "P" trap design. Should fix 90% of your problems.