Well, it happend to me... My tank crashed over night.

Leaellynasaura · May 25, 2018

I have had my reef tank up around 1.5 to 2 years now and I finally have the perfect assortment of coral and fish. In the last few months I have been struggling with cyanobacteria so I have been carbon dosing morning and evening instead of just morning. I use vinegar. I had two tangs, two clowns, two benggai cardinals and two blue/green reef chromis and a swarm of mollies. Last night I accidentally over fed the fish a ton more flakes than normal. I added extra vinegar thinking it would be ok.

I shut off my return pump every night and turn it on in the morning and that has never been a problem. The noise would not allow me to sleep otherwise. I leave the power heads on over night to ensure water circulation/ oxygenation. Last night the extra food, extra vinegar and lack of skimming/circulation resulted in a bacteria bloom. I lost all the fish except the mollies and one benggai cardinal

I am just glad the coral all seem ok. I plan to get rid of the mollies and have a lot less fish going forward.

Kershaw · May 25, 2018

Why would you shut off a return pump? I know you answered this but there are better options out there for noise issues. Sorry for what happened though

Leaellynasaura · May 25, 2018

My bed in my bedroom has its headboard against the wall the aquarium rests against in my office. It drains to the basement via pipes in that wall. The sound is simply too loud for me to sleep with so I turn it off every night. Its like a toilet flushing non stop. If I had a something more fancy than an overflow box and a more expensive return pump I could possibly silence it to more bearable levels.

Ab_Bot · May 25, 2018

Sorry to hear that

WVNed · May 25, 2018

Sorry for your loss.

Greybeard · May 25, 2018

I'm a bit confused about the whole no return pump at night thing... No skimmer? While dosing carbon? Hm. Could have a HOB skimmer, I suppose, but I've never seen one of those in a system with a sump. How about the heater? No circulation in the sump for what, 8-10 hours a day?

I'm a bit surprised that it didn't cause problems.

Leaellynasaura · May 25, 2018

I have what is likely a 40 gallon tank with a deep sand bed that has its own heater and circulation pump and a 100 gallon sump with its own heater in the basement. The display tank also has its own circulation pumps and its own heater. This allows me to turn off the skimmer and return pump at night and it allows all 3 separate chambers to stay at correct temp at night. It has always worked fine. I simply made a mistake by adding a large carbon dose at night when there was a ton of nutrients in the water.

Kershaw · May 25, 2018

Do you have gate valves on the drains? How about putting sound insulating tiles behind bed? Just some ideas.

Leaellynasaura · May 25, 2018

I think the correct thing to do would be to replace my overflow box with one that has two drains and to get a nicer quiet return pump. With two drains I could do bean animal or something similar.

rockskimmerflow · May 25, 2018

Feeding a tank at night and then shutting down a return pump is asking for trouble irrespective of carbon dosing. The fact that you bumped the dose of vinegar was the cherry on top. Im really sorry your fish had to suffer through that fatal suffocation from the bacterial bloom. However, that was a 100 percent avoidable situation. You need to figure out a better mousetrap than shutting down the tank's return pump at night. I bet if you throttled it back so just a little water flowed down the the drains you could reduce the noise considerably while still maintaing a continuous input of filtered water at the rate of maybe 40 or 50 gph- Still plenty to keep fish alive and avoid a heterotroph bloom.

michael giordano · May 25, 2018

Just stop the carbon dosing all together and if you get some algae so what. Algae is natural everyone freaks out when they get a little but it’s no big deal and comes in cycles

mcarroll · May 26, 2018

Leaellynasaura said:
I think the correct thing to do would be to replace my overflow box with one that has two drains and to get a nicer quiet return pump. With two drains I could do bean animal or something similar.

A basement sump seems like crazy overkill for a 40 gallon tank...

...especially if it's defective to the point that you can't even let it run like it needs to. (24x7) Shutting it off daily was an accident waiting to happen.

Don't forget that aeration is probably the most important function of a protein skimmer....they aren't really that great at removing waste, it's more of a coincidence.

Seems like ditching the basement sump and running the 40 as a sensible all in one would be a lot more logical – and a lot more livable!

A simple hang-on skimmer like an old AquaC Remora, or even a Tunze Reefpack kit would be nice replacements.

Comline® Reefpack 250
The Comline® Reefpack 250 features an optimum combination of technical filter components for seawate... mehr

0250.000

213.96 USD

If you have secondary uses for the basement setup, just keep it running as an independent system.

IMO.

If you must keep the current drain setup, then you should also be able to quiet it down by slowing down the flow.

A singe 1" gravity drain should be totally silent up to about 300 GPH, +/- some due to plumbing.

So either just throttle back the pump until it's quiet, or take a bucket and measure the flow rate and aim for a specific flow target while you're aiming for silence, just so you know the flow you end up with.

Leaellynasaura · Jun 2, 2018

The tank is actually 135 gallons. The 40 gallon deep sand bed is down stairs next to the sump. Since the crash I have stopped vinegar dosing and have been trying to net and get rid of the mollies. I am down to 10 now. I am hoping that after they are gone and all I have left is the sole surviving cardinal that the lack of nutrients will kill the Cyanobacteria. So far it is still thriving. I am just glad that the crash did not injure my coral in any way.

rkpetersen · Jun 2, 2018

Wow, sorry that happened; always hurts to hear about a tank crash.

You could keep the return pump running at night and use earplugs to sleep, perhaps? Hearos are fairly comfortable; I use them on long flights. I couldn't do it every day myself, they would bug me too much, but for some people they're ok.

Oldsalt01 · Jun 2, 2018

Think about what you said: "its like a toilet flushing". Shutting off the return is like the toilet NOT flushing. Sorry for your losess, but I agree this is a 100% avoidable situation. I'm not criticising you. If the flow is that loud then you need to figure out how to reduce it without shutting down your filtration. As for netting the mollies, do it with the lights on the tank out. Fish generally don't see well in the dark unless they're the deep sea variety. You can sneak up on them in the dark. Just don't make sudden moves. I had an ocellaris that was an escape artist from a net. With the lights out, a red flashlight and slow, deliberate movement I had him netted in very short order.

Dawsokj1988 · Jun 2, 2018

ear plugs!

Leaellynasaura · Jun 2, 2018

The whole noise problem is compounded by the fact that the piping down and up from the basement is in the wall 18 inches behind my head when I sleep. My office with the tank is the room across from my bedroom. If I could get that bean animal set up with a nice DC pump I think I could let it run 24/7. My tank is not drilled >.< and is maybe 20 or more years old.