Apex and emergency drain from BeanAnimal question

[Steve Maxwell]

Hello,
I have a brand new Apex still sitting in the box as I sloooowly get my 75G put together. I have just dry fit tested my plumbing (will be priming/gluing today hopefully) and I will have the emergency drain running to above the equipment compartment of my eshopps R-200 refugium/sump. While doing this I realized that there really isn't going to be a whole lot of room in the refugium/sump for excess water if the other 2 drains get clogged for some reason and the emergency drain starts draining.

So I thought that it would be cool if there was some way to get the return pump to turn off if the emergency drain starts being used. Is there a way to do this? I thought about using the ALD leak detection device and attach it to the inside of my equipment compartment of the R-200 above the water line and then program it to shut off the pump if the device is triggered. Does this sound feasible? Is there a better/cheaper way to accomplish this?

Thanks!

 

[BlueDevil]

Just thinking out aloud - I wonder if you could put a float valve in the sump and connect it to the Apex via a breakout box to signal the controller to turn the return off if a certain level in the sump is reached?

 

[Breadman03]

If the emergency kicks in, there will be slightly more water than normal in your display and slightly less in the sump because something has to fill the space between where regular drain operation keeps the water and the level high enough to flow into the emergency.

 

[Steve Maxwell]

If the emergency kicks in, there will be slightly more water than normal in your display and slightly less in the sump because something has to fill the space between where regular drain operation keeps the water and the level high enough to flow into the emergency.

Oh...yeah...

 

[Battlecorals Verified Sponsor]

With the bean it's very possible youll get water down the emergency drain every time you start the pump up. With a properly set up bean you should have nothing to worry about if ther is an instance where the two other drains are blocked. Your return should not exceed the flow rate of any single drian line unrestricted. In other words have faith in the bean

Now if you need a leak/ low water alarm or pump shutoff, Then that's another story and can easily be done with a switch in the sump

 

[dbrewsky]

you could always install a float valve in your overflow box that would trigger an alarm/turn off a return pump if the level exceeds normal operation levels like you might see in the event of a catastrophic failure with the bean animal.... which would be exceedingly rare.

This may be more applicable in a herbie or durso setup since the chance of failure would be slightly higher than a bean animal, but a properly designed and maintained bean animal is as reliable as it gets of the 3 main variants of drain plumbing.

 

[Eckolancer]

you could always install a float valve in your overflow box that would trigger an alarm/turn off a return pump if the level exceeds normal operation levels like you might see in the event of a catastrophic failure with the bean animal.... which would be exceedingly rare.

This may be more applicable in a herbie or durso setup since the chance of failure would be slightly higher than a bean animal, but a properly designed and maintained bean animal is as reliable as it gets of the 3 main variants of drain plumbing.

I have a float switch installed in my bean animal overflow box. If water starts flowing down the emergency drain it emails me so I know to clear the other drains. It hasn't come to that but I like security.