Greybeard's Wide, Shallow Peninsula

[Greybeard]

Update: Last night, I stepped into my sump closet, needed to refill my Calcium dosing reservoir.

Squish. Wet socks. Carpet is wet. Hm.

Start looking around, I _think_ I've sprung a leak in one of the RO/DI hoses running around in here. If the tank had lost enough water to make the carpet wet, I'd be low on salinity, right? I'm not... So, start disassembling the sump closet.

When I got everything out of the way, I'm seeing fairly massive salt creep from the back of the bulkheads on my tank overflows. Oh, joy.

Three hours later, sump closet is empty, carpet pulled out, fans running... I put a heater and temp probe in the tank, plenty of flow, lights are still hooked up... tank should be fine for a while, even though the water level is a bit low.

Huge mass of Chaetomorpha from my macro reactor (it was overdue for harvesting) along with the large marinepure block from my sump are stashed in a 10g rubbermaid bucket. Went to Wally World this morning, bought a cheap 10g heater and a 10g hang on filter that I could put in the bucket. No media in it, but it keeps the water moving, disturbs the surface. Should be fine for a while. I can even run the LED tube from the macro reactor if I need to, though I doubt I will. It's only for a few days.

Ordered 4 new 1.5" bulkheads, some 1.5" pipe, a 1.5" bulkhead wrench, and some 1" Schedule 80 couplers. Should be all I need to get things replumbed. That'll replace both drain lines, both ends, from the tank to the overflow box (about 5 inches). All that is glued in place, it'll have to be cut apart, no saving the plumbing.

Need to build a new table to hold the sump. Old one was untreated plywood, and soaked up the water pretty good. I don't want to reuse it. Build something that is open at the bottom, so I can better see a problem, should it happen again.

Also thinking about doing something other than carpet in the sump room floor. I know, it was a bad idea from the start, but hey, that's what was there. We'll see how the subfloor dries out over the next few days.

Plumbing should be here Thursday. I'm likely to hold off and re-plumb on Saturday. 4 days. Wish me luck

 

[tripdad]

Wow, that's a stinker. Hope the re-plumb goes smoothly. Maybe think about a water sensor for the floor hooked to your Apex? Just an idea, good luck.

 

[Greybeard]

Wow, that's a stinker. Hope the re-plumb goes smoothly. Maybe think about a water sensor for the floor hooked to your Apex? Just an idea, good luck.

Have one. Under the sump stand. Never got wet.

 

[Zionas]

Ouch sorry to hear about the leak. I hope it all gets cleared up soon.

Would love a full list of your livestock and their sizes. How do you manage a clean up crew with a bare bottom setup?

 

[Greybeard]

Ouch sorry to hear about the leak. I hope it all gets cleared up soon.

Would love a full list of your livestock and their sizes. How do you manage a clean up crew with a bare bottom setup?

Leak being fixed... no rush. I'm replacing the carpeted floor in the sump closet with vinyl plank tonight. One nice thing about a small sump room... One box of flooring will do it

Full list of livestock and sizes? Don't have that kind of time at the moment.

Cleanup crew? I'm not a big fan of the huge CUC packages that folks are selling. Good way to kill a bunch of critters, if you ask me.

My CUC consists of a foxface, a tomini tang, and a scopus tang. Supplement them with maybe 20 snails, a mix of Turbo, Astrea, Trocus.

I don't do hermit crabs. In my experience, they kill snails, and are opportunistic feeders. No algae to speak of? They'll make due with eating your corals. No thanks.

I've got a bunch of asterina starfish that, IHMO, are excellent clean up crew... bristle worms? I've seen one or two, but I'm sure there are more around.

Four skunk striped cleaner shrimp (excellent scavengers!).

Don't know if you'd consider high flow a part of the clean up crew, but that, along with weekly water changes where I can quickly and easily siphon out what detritus collects in the 'sweet spot', sox changed every other day...

No need for any more clean up crew.

 

[Greybeard]

Fair warning: Don’t want to listen to someone whine? Go away, that’s what I’m doing.

So. Feb 2. Wet Socks. Leak. Complete teardown of my sump closet reveals (A) leaking RO/DI press fitting caused the wet carpet, and (B) Salt Creep shows that I’ve got a slow leak at the bulkeads on the back of my tank.

The way my tank is plumbed, I’ve got 2x 1.5” bulkheads, glued to a straight 6” pipe, glued to another pair of 1.5” bulkheads in my overflow box. Yeah, goes through the wall, so there’s some distance there, but no room for a union, so glued joints.

Leaking, glued joints.

I tossed my heater into the tank, lowered the water level, and completely emptied my sump closet. Even took the opportunity to yank the carpet and lay some cheap snap-connect flooring. Not great, but it works… better than carpet, anyway.

Ordered 4x 1.5” bulkheads and a bit of 1.5” pipe. A few 1” barrel connectors to reconnect cut down tubes from overflow box to sump.

Shows up the 5th. Hurray, BRS. Cut the overflow box loose, re-glue everything, had to pull my return lines loose, but there’s a pair of Cepex valves in line, just unscrewed them…

Plumbing everything back, leak testing, I’ve got a drip in one of the cepex valves. Grabbed my big slip joint pliers to snug it up… CRACK.

Broke the union fitting at the bottom of the valve. <sigh> Upon disassembling, the o ring was out of place. Never needed those pliers.

So. Order a new ¾” cepex valve, bit of 1” pipe, 1-3/4” reducing bushing, some more 1” barrels….

Arrived today, Feb10. Cut apart my return manifold, rebuilt the branch I’d broken, glue… Just FYI: The ¾” Cepex valves I ordered from BRS a couple years back are NOT compatable with the current ¾” Cepex valves they’re shipping. Had to cut out the whole valve and replace it.

Testing: Dry. Oh, joy, I now have flow through my EMPTY (excepting water) sump.

Guess what I get to do next. Clean, re-install, and rewire every bit of equipment in my sump closet. NSW mixing station, Kalk reactor and reservoir, Algae reactor, Skimmer, ATO system, Calc/Alk dosing system, half a dozen Apex sensors…

Sometimes, you just gotta wonder… is it really worth it?

 

[Greybeard]

So... after a few days running, I note that my repairs have resulted in a very slow leak. One side of the Cepex union ball valve is leaking a bit. I've pulled it apart, swapped ends... the leak swapped ends with the valve body. A visual inspection shows some rough areas in the molding of the plastic along one of the union mating surfaces of the valve body.

No big deal. Called @Bulk Reef Supply, this valve was ordered maybe a week ago.

Their support guy wants photographic proof of defect.

To get that photo, I've got to shut down my sump, lower the water level enough so that I can remove my return lines, pull the return manifold out of the system...

I've done this three times in the last couple of weeks. Takes me about an hour to disassemble, and another hour to reassemble the system. Space is tight, and I'm not a small man. In short, pulling that valve is a pain in the rear end, and I'm not going to do it again without having the replacement in hand.

Am I expecting too much here? Bet I've spent 5k with BRS in the last year... but they won't trust that I'm not lying about a $20 valve.

Eh. It's $20. I just ordered a new valve. I'll swap the valve bodies out and send the damaged one back.

Know what? I'm gonna repost this where more folks will see it. I really don't think I was being unreasonable.

 

[Bulk Reef Supply Verified Sponsor]

So... after a few days running, I note that my repairs have resulted in a very slow leak. One side of the Cepex union ball valve is leaking a bit. I've pulled it apart, swapped ends... the leak swapped ends with the valve body. A visual inspection shows some rough areas in the molding of the plastic along one of the union mating surfaces of the valve body.

No big deal. Called @Bulk Reef Supply, this valve was ordered maybe a week ago.

Their support guy wants photographic proof of defect.

To get that photo, I've got to shut down my sump, lower the water level enough so that I can remove my return lines, pull the return manifold out of the system...

I've done this three times in the last couple of weeks. Takes me about an hour to disassemble, and another hour to reassemble the system. Space is tight, and I'm not a small man. In short, pulling that valve is a pain in the rear end, and I'm not going to do it again without having the replacement in hand.

Am I expecting too much here? Bet I've spent 5k with BRS in the last year... but they won't trust that I'm not lying about a $20 valve.

Eh. It's $20. I just ordered a new valve. I'll swap the valve bodies out and send the damaged one back.

Know what? I'm gonna repost this where more folks will see it. I really don't think I was being unreasonable.

Hey @Greybeard ,
I replied to your other thread, but I'll post here too. Can you send over a PM with the email on your BRS account or order number? I'd like to look into this with our customer service team manager. Ultimately, if something arrives and it is defective, it's our responsibility to help take care of it. If it were a high dollar item, we may require you to ship back before we can offer a refund or replacement, but for a ball valve, it's silly to have you jump through all sorts of hoops.

 

[Greybeard]

Hey @Greybeard ,
I replied to your other thread, but I'll post here too. Can you send over a PM with the email on your BRS account or order number? I'd like to look into this with our customer service team manager. Ultimately, if something arrives and it is defective, it's our responsibility to help take care of it. If it were a high dollar item, we may require you to ship back before we can offer a refund or replacement, but for a ball valve, it's silly to have you jump through all sorts of hoops.

Done.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Sorry you have had so many issues with leaks/plumbing lately. While it can be frustrating, it is all part of the challenge of keeping a successful tank. In a couple of months this will just be an unpleasant memory.



And kudos to BRS for stepping in and taking care of you.

 

[Greybeard]

Thread in the lounge got blown away... which is fine with me.

Just want to say on here, BRS made things right, and I consider the issue closed.

 

[Greybeard]

Aaaanddd... it's back.

So, here, finally, is the photograph of the ball valve that BRS sent me a week or so back:

Note the rough machined areas on both sides of the mating surface. Valve won't seal, constant slow leak.

So... here's the brand new valve, as delivered to me from BRS yesterday. Photo taken right out of the box:

Note the rough machining surfaces, in exactly the same locations as the prior ball valve. Yup, after swapping the valve bodies... still leaks.

I know, it's not really @Bulk Reef Supply's fault, they didn't machine the valve, they're just a distributor... but man, I'm tired of dealing with this.

My macro reactor and skimmer are STILL not back in the tank, it's been FIFTEEN DAYS now since I first stepped in wet carpet. I'm about to cut the return manifold apart and rebuild it with simple unions instead of valves.

Arg.

 

[najer]

That sucks.

 

[Greybeard]

That sucks.

My thoughts exactly

 

[Greybeard]

Just got confirmation from BRS, They pulled 5 units off the shelf, all of them have this same defect. Obviously, Cepex, or whoever is molding these valve bodies for Cepex, had a mold problem. There's likely a whole bunch of these bad valves out there.

I've got nothing bad to say about BRS in this, they've done what they can. They didn't make the bad valve bodies. Aside from the time it's taken to resolve the problem, nothing lost.

Meanwhile, I went to Supplyhouse.com and bought a 3/4" BlueFin union ball valve, and the additional PVC parts I need to rebuild my return manifold AGAIN.

As I've said several times in the past: I'm a BRS customer. I buy from them, even when the price is a bit high, because of their support of the reefing community.

That said, the BluFin valve at Supplyhouse was $5.76. We'll see what the quality looks like when it arrives.

 

[zukihara]

I told ya supplyhouse was pretty spiffy!

I have nothing against BRS at all, but sometimes it pays to go elsewhere for some items, particularly when they are out of stock on so many things.

I am about to install a BRS valve, so I better get it out and examine it.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Aaaanddd... it's back.

So, here, finally, is the photograph of the ball valve that BRS sent me a week or so back:

Note the rough machined areas on both sides of the mating surface. Valve won't seal, constant slow leak.

So... here's the brand new valve, as delivered to me from BRS yesterday. Photo taken right out of the box:

Note the rough machining surfaces, in exactly the same locations as the prior ball valve. Yup, after swapping the valve bodies... still leaks.

I know, it's not really @Bulk Reef Supply's fault, they didn't machine the valve, they're just a distributor... but man, I'm tired of dealing with this.

My macro reactor and skimmer are STILL not back in the tank, it's been FIFTEEN DAYS now since I first stepped in wet carpet. I'm about to cut the return manifold apart and rebuild it with simple unions instead of valves.

Arg.

Sorry about the trouble with the valves. That sucks.

Hopefully rebuilding the manifold goes smoothly.

 

[Greybeard]

So. 16 days without skimmer or macro reactor. 9 days without sump flow.

I'm happy to say, leak is sealed, no more drips, skimmer and macro reactors went back in to place last night...

And I don't think I've lost anything.

 

[najer]

Great to hear.

 

[cmaxwell39]

Glad you finally got it taken care of.