The old snail in the overflow trick!

[authentic]

Returned to my DT after dinner and my return pump was spitting a lot of bubbles into my DT.upon inspecting the sump I noticed my ATO was not on and my level was low.without panicking I started to fill my sump with ro. I noticed the water level of my tank was high and the water was exiting through my emergency overflow (bean animal setup).I have a gate valve on my main overflow so I tried to open it without success,no water was draining through,that's when it became clear,,,something was stuck ..but where?..shut off the return and started poking around.I had to drain my overflow box to remove my drain pipe and when I looked with a flashlight,there it was stuck in my bulkhead!now it was time to figure out how to remove it.hammer and screwdriver to break it apart? (Didn't seem like a good idea..)start removing my plumbing from underneath? (Could be done but my plumbing is done really well and I'd rather not mess with it) so I went to my garage to look around for something and there it was!I have a flexible grabber used for retrieving screws and such when you work on a car and drop something into the engine.took less than 5 seconds to grab that snail and remove him.cleaned up my overflow and started everything up.afterwards I made a screen to fit over my main drain (should have done that on set up)well hindsight is 20/20.but now that's one less thing I have to worry about,and deal with the thousand others.

 

[saleen385]

been there LOL

 

[andyg1960]

I was trying to figure out what RO Butter was.....

 

[authentic]

Edited the butter part lol

 

[twilliard]

Did the snail survive

 

[dbrewsky]

murphy's law strikes again!

 

[authentic]

Yes the snail was alive and safe,y returned to the DT,I did however put a collar and a leash on it and tied it to a rock.

 

[pondman]

Just goes to show ya critters in our tanks do the craziest things. I once had a hermit that somehow got himself wedged into the teeth of a overflow and as I fed and some of the food made its way to overflow he would grab it.i wish I had a video of that.

 

[TheEngineer]

I had a turbo that insisted on crawling into my main drain. You'd think at some point I would have put a screen over it, but nah. I preferred having to retrieve it at 3AM repeatedly.

EDIT: I had a piece of flexible tubing I would push up from the bottom of the drain and he would pop out on the top.

 

[matt_97055]

I had a snail do the same thing to me. That's how I wound up with 35+ galons of water on my floor. I now have a screen on all most everything!!

 

[authentic]

What kind of screen is everybody using I made one out of a hang on feeder but I had to use a blowtorch to melted into shape

 

[dbrewsky]

these are probably the best strainers i have ever found https://premiumaquatics.com/products/black-suction-screen-1-8-tall-male-thread.html

I used these on my herbie and bought a couple so I can easily removed and replace them while cleaning the old one. I would think it would be very difficult to clog one of these