Joel & Denise's 90G Reef Build

[joro]

You should get a picture of it while it's running. It'll tell us more about how it's doing.

 

Here's a video showing it running from both the side and top that may help diagnose - https://youtu.be/IRjChn8YXmw

 

I have a 90, same Durso.  Both the drain and return have valves on them and I T off the return similar to your pic in post #5.  I have to turn the valve on the drain to slow it to get a balance between it and the return.  Fine tuning done with a combination of the drain valve and the valve on the T'd line that goes into my refugium section of sump.  Doing this, I can achieve a quite overflow.  Operational like that for 11 years now.

 

Your setup will require adjustments based on plumbing and return pump flow. 

 

Appreciate the insight and have you noticed any issues with the valve's longevity/performance when using them to slow the flow down?

[joro]

Questions for the forums in regard to heater placement.  We recently purchased 2x Eheim Jager TruTemp 150W heaters which we were planning to place in the sump.  Would it be best to place one in each end (e.g. one in the skimmer compartment and one in the return compartment) or is there some trick to placing these correctly?

[Origami]

Keep in mind that you don't "balance" the return with the overflow. Unless you overdrive an overflow with flow that exceeds the capacity of the drain (which results in water on the floor or a dry sump compartment), this happens automatically by design.

 

The video that you posted was helpful. It seems to me that the sound that you're hearing is the sound of water falling from the overflow level to the level of the water in the oveflow chamber (a distance of a few inches). Looking closely at the video, it also seems that you have a "spout" of water on the left hand side of the overflow weir that is not coming from through the "teeth" of the overflow. Is this correct? Is there an insert of some sort missing in that stretch of the overflow? Try mechanically blocking that stretch with a sponge or something (just as a test) and see if it quiets things down as that spout may be the source of the noise.

[Origami]

There's no trick to placing heaters in the sump that I'm aware of. The mixing of water in the sump and the return process tends to heat things evenly. If anything, the only trick that might be offered is that you can often get more reliability out of a heater that is not fully submerged (keep the sealed top out of water and the glass envelope with the heater element below the water level) even if it's a fully submersible heater. The reason for this is simple: It mitigates against failure of the mechanical seal between the top of the heater and the heating element envelope. Failure of this seal has led to many exploding and failing heaters in the past.

[matt]

I put a heater in my sump and a heater in my overflow. I did this for two reasons. One, redundancy is good and having two heaters seems prudent in case one fails (you have that covered). And two, if my return pump fails when I'm out of town at least the heater in the overflow *may possibly* help keep tank temps up a little versus being of no help whatsoever in the sump. I don't know how much impact the heater in the overflow will have ambiently (wrong word?) through the plastic overflow itself in the absence of passing water flow, but I know the sump heater won't do me any good in a situation where my return pump fails. Oh, and fewer heaters in my acrylic sump seemed to limit the chance of melting or otherwise weakening the acrylic. 

[joro]

The video that you posted was helpful. It seems to me that the sound that you're hearing is the sound of water falling from the overflow level to the level of the water in the oveflow chamber (a distance of a few inches). Looking closely at the video, it also seems that you have a "spout" of water on the left hand side of the overflow weir that is not coming from through the "teeth" of the overflow. Is this correct? Is there an insert of some sort missing in that stretch of the overflow? Try mechanically blocking that stretch with a sponge or something (just as a test) and see if it quiets things down as that spout may be the source of the noise.

 

Both of what I'll call "knockouts" (for the returns) were punched out, so the one doesn't have anything in it - I think that's the stretch you're referring to? Also, one other thing I thought about is what's the right level to keep the drain pipe at? Right now it's about an inch below the teeth of the overflow, is that's correct placement?

[Origami]

Both of what I'll call "knockouts" (for the returns) were punched out, so the one doesn't have anything in it - I think that's the stretch you're referring to? Also, one other thing I thought about is what's the right level to keep the drain pipe at? Right now it's about an inch below the teeth of the overflow, is that's correct placement?

The 1-inch fall should still be quiet. Because the bottom of the knockout is probably lower than the teeth at some point, a lot of flow is being directed there. I'm guessing that this causes the water to run through at a high horizontal velocity (and the water tends to pull together to form a rounded stream, rather than a sheet as it falls) that leads to the splashing sound. Try covering that gap manually to test the idea and, if it fixes the noise problem, look for a longer-term solution.

[joro]

The 1-inch fall should still be quiet. Because the bottom of the knockout is probably lower than the teeth at some point, a lot of flow is being directed there. I'm guessing that this causes the water to run through at a high horizontal velocity (and the water tends to pull together to form a rounded stream, rather than a sheet as it falls) that leads to the splashing sound. Try covering that gap manually to test the idea and, if it fixes the noise problem, look for a longer-term solution.

 

Alright, so I've done some investigating and I think I found the culprits - 

 

1. Most of the noise I'm describing is coming from a small hole under the return elbow to which the loc-lines screw into.  Is this necessary? Seems that if I got a new elbow (without the hole) that would eliminate the vast amount of the noise.
2. It does appear as well the "knockout" holes are causing issues as well - one side is empty, the other side has the loc-lines coming out but they don't fill the hole completely so there is still water overflowing this hole underneath them.  Suggestions on how to close these up?

[Origami]

The hole there is a siphon break. It's there to keep the return from siphoning water back into the sump in the event of a power outage. The way I handled this in the past was to loosely tie a small block of open cell filter foam (the kind used on pump intakes) over the hole. This broke up the stream of water and kept the hole open so it could do its job.

 

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[joro]

Progress update - 

 

1. Got a few new "toys" in today including the Apex Gold system, the built-in probe holders in the sump are a little lower than desired and since they aren't supposed to fully submerged, I decided to order a small holder from Neptune which should be here tomorrow to finalize the installation!
2. Purchase around 90 pounds of Real Reef Rock (3rd Generation) + a Tonga Branch from Quantum Reefs and we're very impressed. We've got another 4 bags of live sand coming tomorrow, so we'll get that in and time to cycle!
3. A view of the aquascape without the sand, will try to post a better picture once the dust storm dies down over the next few days.  
4. Unfortunately we purchased a Maxspect Gyre XF-150 today and once installed it doesn't seem to be working.  It will turn on for a few seconds, then start blinking red.  Maybe another 10 seconds goes buy and it does the same thing over again.  I've got a ticket in with CoralVue but any experience here with this and suggestions for how to fix (if it's not a bad unit)?

Thanks!

[joro]

Sand is in and has settled fort the most part; however, we still need to do a little raking around the rocks - potentially even taking a little bit out. If we go the route of scooping some out, is it recommend we put this excess in the refugium or are we better off just tossing it?

 

Apex + probes and a new Gyre have all been installed since the last update.  I need to do a little clean up with the rat's nest of wires but we're making progress. Now to wait for cycling! 

Edited April 23, 2016 by joro

[joro]

We've made some great progress the past few weeks including cleaning up the rat's nest of cables and we've made some added some livestock including a very small CUC, 2 B&W Clowns, Fire Shrimp, and DWG.  Everyone is eating very well and we're still running tests every other day to verify parameters all of which are staying at 0 minus a small uptick in Nitrates which (somewhere between 0 and 5 PPM).

 

A few questions from you all - 

 

1. We had a small diatom bloom which the CUC promptly took care of; however, now we're starting to see a wave of Hair Algae.  We'd prefer to avoid hermits if possible but any suggestions on what would be helpful in reducing the growth?  For reference on the CUC - we have 5 Trochus, 5 Cerith, and 4 Nassarius currently which are all pretty active. 
2. We finally got the top of the overflow quiet but now the sump is noisy.  What we’ve noticed is that the water from the drain line is basically overflowing the open section above where the filter socks sit (red arrow in second photo) so it’s creating a loud “waterfall” sound and also not passing through the foam block filter nor the filter socks themselves which is how I believe it was designed.  We’ve experimented with dialing down the drain line; however, we almost have to close it to make it quite which also isn’t ideal as it makes it easier to clog.  The return pump is only on 2 of 5 in terms of power, so not sure how much adjustment we can do there.

[s2nhle]

any latest update?

[joro]

Lots of updates (both good and bad) since our last post but perhaps the biggest update is that we're currently building our dream tank in which we will consolidate this one in the coming weeks Yiu can follow that build here on WAMAS or on my blog (links in signature).