So tonight I broke open a bottle of wine to sit back and relax and program the apex. I didn't finish that glass, so it's time for an update.
The last days have been very busy. I was double checking all the plumbing and found a lose fitting from the union that went into the bulkhead. Turns out the bulkhead was cracking from the fitting being screwed in too far. On Friday I replaced the bulkhead and at night I was able to pump at least 110 gallons into the tank. I pumped another 100g or so into the tank today and got the pumps going. It was a relief to see water in the tank!
After dinner I broke open some wine to program the APEX. It took a good bit for me to understand some stuff on the programming side, or so I thought.
The return pumps kept going on and off (I could hear the full syphon trying to establish). So I was working on the pump profile on the Apex. I decided to go into the living room to see what all the ports I labeled were as I stepped into water...
Water.. all over the floor. I looked at the display and it was draining.
Panic mode set in and I sprung into action! I got the pump out of the garage that I used to pump water into the house and started pumping it out of the sump. I thought it was odd that the sump was overflowing. (That should key you in on the rookie mistake I made today.) I pumped out the water and noticed the tank stopped draining.
I love the FLOR tiles, they absorbed a super amount of water. I used all the towels in my bathroom and the guest bathroom and a few rolls of paper towels and had my wet dry vac going.
After I got about all the water up that I could, I inspected the seals on the tank. Everything looked good. Then underneath the tank in case the glass broke. Nope, not that either. Then I looked at the return lines and noticed that draining stopped at the lowest return. I immediately knew of my mistake.. something I've read from others over the years that I totally didn't pay attention to. The returns became a syphon to the tank and sucked it all back down to the sump.
I turned on one of the return pumps and got the sump back to normal level to see how much water I lost. It looks about 50g or so, so I started making water again.
I wanted to have the returns push water in back of the rocks and also have them push it somewhat lower than the filtered water didn't just end up right back into the overflow. Well, I think I'm going to have to abandon that plan. I would drill a anti-syphon hole, but I'm afraid that those will fail and after this water mess, I'll just go through the same.
Also, the Apex really should make a distinction between powerheads and pumps. If the pumps would have stayed on, at least I wouldn't had to deal with the water tonight.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to replumb the return? Should I just put them back up an inch below the surface?
