New build - 7.5g cube
- Nano Build
- Thread starter WiscoFishNut
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WiscoFishNut
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Had another one of those "cheap" lessons today.. I did some maintenance at the end of the day yesterday, but did something different..
Typically I swap out a single nano size pouch of chemi pure blue about once a month. Recently I saw that PO4 had creeped up to 0.3. So I thought I'd just take a mesh bag, throw a little bit of Phosban in there along with the chemi pure pouch and kill two birds with one stone. Great idea, bad result. Apparently that bag was enough to back up the HOB and cause it to overflow. As you can imagine it continued to dump water, the ATO (only 2 gallons thank God) dumped, then the siphon broke on the HOB when the water level drained down.
Silver lining - the water only drained down to just above the height of my torch and heater. Figure the lucky odds there lol!
Salinity dropped from 1.025 to 1.020. Temp stayed stable.
Thankfully I had a full jug of freshly mixed SW in the basement at the ready. Topped the tank back off with SW and got to work with the steam cleaner. The temp did swing at that point down to 73-74, but I figured that would be a short setback and less harmful than the salinity drop. Salinity is now back to 1.023, will continue to raise it with a diluted mix in the ATO. Temp is back at 77 and returning to the 78 set point.
Moral of the story - if you're running the inTank media basket in an AquaClear HOB filter don't get greedy with how much stuff you put in the last section. It was working just right with a coarse sponge in the first chamber, Seachem Matrix at the bottom of the final chamber, and a nano bag of chemi pure blue sitting on top of the the matrix. That setup had been running just fine for 5 months straight. The mesh bag apparently was a little too bulky with the Phosban(only 7 grams!) and the chemi pure pouch in it. There have been other posts on here from folks having similar problems, guess I just got lucky up to this point lol. Switching things back to how I had it before and will come up with a plan B for the PO4..
Typically I swap out a single nano size pouch of chemi pure blue about once a month. Recently I saw that PO4 had creeped up to 0.3. So I thought I'd just take a mesh bag, throw a little bit of Phosban in there along with the chemi pure pouch and kill two birds with one stone. Great idea, bad result. Apparently that bag was enough to back up the HOB and cause it to overflow. As you can imagine it continued to dump water, the ATO (only 2 gallons thank God) dumped, then the siphon broke on the HOB when the water level drained down.
Silver lining - the water only drained down to just above the height of my torch and heater. Figure the lucky odds there lol!
Salinity dropped from 1.025 to 1.020. Temp stayed stable.
Thankfully I had a full jug of freshly mixed SW in the basement at the ready. Topped the tank back off with SW and got to work with the steam cleaner. The temp did swing at that point down to 73-74, but I figured that would be a short setback and less harmful than the salinity drop. Salinity is now back to 1.023, will continue to raise it with a diluted mix in the ATO. Temp is back at 77 and returning to the 78 set point.
Moral of the story - if you're running the inTank media basket in an AquaClear HOB filter don't get greedy with how much stuff you put in the last section. It was working just right with a coarse sponge in the first chamber, Seachem Matrix at the bottom of the final chamber, and a nano bag of chemi pure blue sitting on top of the the matrix. That setup had been running just fine for 5 months straight. The mesh bag apparently was a little too bulky with the Phosban(only 7 grams!) and the chemi pure pouch in it. There have been other posts on here from folks having similar problems, guess I just got lucky up to this point lol. Switching things back to how I had it before and will come up with a plan B for the PO4..
