Water level in sump area seems too low!

Bombschell

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I upgraded my EVO 13.5 with an InTank chamber one basket and Sicci .5 now the water level in the sump area is about a quarter of the possible volume. I am some what concerned especially since only about half of the heater is submerged now. Any pointers?
 

KrisReef

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SHut the pumps off and see where if the tank is going to overflow if you add more water? It might be evaporation?
 

Andresnyc93

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Open up the sicce .5 pump and bring down the volume of the pump, unfortunately you have to take it out and take it apart to do it but you’ll fix your issue
 
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Bombschell

Bombschell

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Open up the sicce .5 pump and bring down the volume of the pump, unfortunately you have to take it out and take it apart to do it but you’ll fix your issue
Yeah there is a dial on the front for adjusting the flow, but I wanted to run it at full 185gph to turn the water over as much as possible, but I guess I'll have to back it down.
 

MaxTremors

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You shouldn’t put your heater in the return chamber since that’s where any evaporation will show up. If you changed your return pump, the increased power will result in the water level in the DT to be slightly higher (as the weir is only so wide, the water level rises until it’s pushing through as much water as the return pump is pushing in). This will make the water level in the return chamber go down since it’s the chamber where any displacement or evaporation will show. This is completely normal in small AiO tanks as the overflow is sized to accommodate the volume from the stock return pump, when you get a more powerful pump, the overflow can’t accommodate the increased amount of water without raising the water level in the DT (think of it this way, if you push five 1’ square blocks through a doorway that was exactly 5’ wide, they fit just fine, but if you then tried to push 8 blocks through, you’d have to stack the extra 3 blocks on top of the 5 to fit them through the doorway - I feel like that doesn’t make any sense, hopefully you get what I’m saying). Just add some more salt water (you want the return chamber to be around half full, you don’t want it filled all the way to the top), mark the level that you fill it to (on my AiO, I have a little Velcro strip with a little arrow on a piece of Velcro, so I can move it up or down after a water change so I know how far to fill it up when I top the tank off).
 
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Bombschell

Bombschell

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So it turns out that the flow diverter that come with the chamber one basket creates so much restriction that it allows the pump to pull more water than can flow into chambers 2 & 3. When I removed it everything balanced out again.
 

Andresnyc93

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Yes but not putting that flow diverter will make water go all over the place and not through the chambers like you want it to.
 
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Bombschell

Bombschell

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Yes but not putting that flow diverter will make water go all over the place and not through the chambers like you want it to.
It seems to be working alright for now so I'm going to run it for a few days without and see what happens. You wouldn't think a less than half inch piece of plastic would have such a dramatic effect on the level in the sump area.
 

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