Clean those pipes for higher GPH turnover

[rsumner]

I decided to clean all the plumbing on my Reefer 525 this weekend to see how much more flow and turn over from my display I could get. For the impatient, I got an additional 35 GPH.

To start, this is how things looked:







I soaked them in citric acid for about an hour and then followed up with a 20 minute muriatic acid bath for the tough stuff:



The result was pipes that looked like they did when I unpacked them:



The results from my Apex flow meter:



I started with about 435GPH and getting around 470GPH now. I'm running my Varios8 at about 60%. The graph shows about a 1 hour spike up to around 525, but that was when I turned up the power on the Varios8 to 100%.

 

[ca1ore]

Yeah, that sounds about right. Loss depends on the pipe length and the amount of crud.

 

[KStatefan]

And the velocity of the liquid.

How long between new and cleaning?

 

[rsumner]

I started running water through this system around April, so this is about 6 months of build-up. In full disclosure, I had at least 2 separate incidents of calcium/alkalinity overdosing that likely caused significant acceleration in the need to do this.

 

[ca1ore]

I run the Neptune flow meters, and after about 6 months had seen a drop of about 50 gph (from 1,250 at start). All assuming the flow meters are generally accurate.

 

[fredjr]

Boy, I'm sure I'm overdue.

 

[redpine42]

Mine has only been running 3 months, but looking for a missing fish I looked inside the over flow. The drain is really gross. Got the same tank, so my question is how do you take it apart with out pouring water all over?

 

[rsumner]

Once you turn your return off, the water level in the overflow will drop below the inner down pipe which is about 2-3" below the weir. Next, disconnect the emergency drain within the sump (easier to disconnect) and cram a piece of 1" silicon hose in the hole to channel the water into the sump so it won't drip down the side wall of the sump. After that, you can remove the emergency pipe within the overflow and the water should pour out. I didn't do it this way and missed quite a bit of water and had to drop some towels around the tank to cleanup the mess. Good thing my wife was out running errands at the time ;-). Once this was done, the overflow compartment was completely empty and I could disconnect everything.

I left the powerheads running in the tank while I got everything cleaned up -- took me a few hours.