33 Cube - the work begins

[Dmitry]

I tried a few scenarios today and none of them yielded the desired result.

I lowered the whole durso as low as I'm comfortable doing it, but the water remains over the T.

I got a 1/8 drill and made a hole in a new cap. The water level in the overflow fluctuates from above the T to below it, making a flushing sound. Same thing happens if the hole is completely covered.

If no cap is on or with the original 3/16 hole - water is over the T. Here are a few pics and remains steady.

So, I'm back at square one. 3/16 hole, water over the T. What's the risk in this again? The whole thing makes fairly little noise, so is it ok to just leave it all as is? I'm not sure what other adjustments I can make at this point!

On the plus side, the tank doesn't appear to be going through a cycle. The nitrates are a bit high. I might add some inverts this weekends. Or even a pair of Clowns if I can find any (and assuming parameters remain steady through the week.) These readings are using Salifert kits. The lowest Ammonia level on the chart reads <0.25. I assume that means 0. There's no actual 0 on the color chart!

Ph: 8.4
Ammonia: <0.25
Nitrate: 15
Nitrite: 0

 

[masterswimmer]

I would stick with square one, with the lowered elbow. I believe it is your pic on the left from above. No risk, just odd that the water level remains so constant and won't adjust to the varying scenarios.

How much LR are you using to cycle the tank? Was the LR cured or uncured? It will take a few days before the cycle begins. I recommend waiting before adding any livestock. Give the tank a chance to mature.

 

[nanoreefer22]

D,

If you want to try something simple that might fix your problems try making the hole bigger fitting a piece of tubing into the hole and having a john guest fitting on the other end. That way if the hole is too big you can always play around with the amount of air being sucked into the pipe by open or closing the fitting. I'll try to take a picture of mine today.

 

[masterswimmer]

Nice functional idea Kris. I like it.

The only problem is, the water level in the overflow with NO cap is basically the same as the water level with the cap and a 3/8" hole. So hole size appears to be unimportant for some reason. :scratchch

 

[Dmitry]

How much LR are you using to cycle the tank? Was the LR cured or uncured? It will take a few days before the cycle begins. I recommend waiting before adding any livestock. Give the tank a chance to mature.

I've got, I guess, around 50lbs of live rock. It was from my old tank and has been sitting in a bucket this whole time. So it's fully cured. The sand was a mixture of Arag-alive and Tahitian black moon sand.

 

[masterswimmer]

The amount of biological colonies that will colonize your rock is directly proportionate to the amount of bioload you have in the tank. So a low bioload will translate into low biological colonies. That's why the old adage to add livestock slowly is so true. It will give your bio colonies an opportunity to 'catch up' to the bio load.

Now, with that being said, I'd say you might want to add your small, non aggressive fish first. But I'd still wait a couple of weeks. I think you'll still experience a cycle. Albeit a small/short cycle, but a cycle nevertheless.

 

[Dmitry]

I just put in a silverside in there to ghost feed. I'll keep it in for a couple of hours and take it out. This should kick something off if there's a cycle.

 

[masterswimmer]

No need to take it out. Just leave it there. That's what the biological colonies will feed on.

 

[nanoreefer22]

I tried a few scenarios today and none of them yielded the desired result.

I lowered the whole durso as low as I'm comfortable doing it, but the water remains over the T.

I got a 1/8 drill and made a hole in a new cap. The water level in the overflow fluctuates from above the T to below it, making a flushing sound. Same thing happens if the hole is completely covered.

If no cap is on or with the original 3/16 hole - water is over the T. Here are a few pics and remains steady.

So, I'm back at square one. 3/16 hole, water over the T. What's the risk in this again? The whole thing makes fairly little noise, so is it ok to just leave it all as is? I'm not sure what other adjustments I can make at this point!

On the plus side, the tank doesn't appear to be going through a cycle. The nitrates are a bit high. I might add some inverts this weekends. Or even a pair of Clowns if I can find any (and assuming parameters remain steady through the week.) These readings are using Salifert kits. The lowest Ammonia level on the chart reads <0.25. I assume that means 0. There's no actual 0 on the color chart!

Ph: 8.4
Ammonia: <0.25
Nitrate: 15
Nitrite: 0

D,

I was just playing around with my durso and when more air is let into the durso the water level rises a bit and stays there. When the hole is closed just a little the water level goes back to right above the 90 degree elbow.

When i close the hole or the hole becomes to small it starts fluctuating and making the flushing sound like you described.

I think the 3/16 hole is letting in tooo much air which is why your water level is rising just as much as when there is no cap. And on the other hand 1/8th is tooo small and it's causing the flushing.

I was thinking you might need to find something inbetween the two hole sizes, which you might achieve with the john guest fitting. If you don't want to go that route, I'm not sure if the amount of water flowing through the durso and the hole size for air have any relationship. If you have a valve on your mag 5, try toying with a little to see if the 1/8th inch hole would work better if you were pushing less flow through the durso. It might work or I could be completely wrongrangehat.

-Kris

 

[Dmitry]

Kris,

I suppose I can get a file and start increasing the 1/8 hole bit by bit. Getting that john thingy sounds like a PIA! It probably isn't, but... I'm also not sure I want to cut down the volume being pushed by the Mag 5 - I don't want to cut the turnover any more. The closed loop isn't that strong. I was looking at possibly getting a 900gph Eheim, but it's intake is 1''. Which is fine in theory - the drain on the loop is 1''. But we reduced that to 3/4'' for the current pump - and we reduced it before the ball valve! (Actually the 90 elbow coming directly out of the hole is the reducer.) So swapping it out to 1'' would mean re-plumbing that whole thing. And at this point - I'm not in the mood. Anyway, my point is: I don't want to cut any more flow in the tank. If there are no dangers to having the water level above the T - and about a quarter below the surface of the overflow - then I don't mind just leaving it that way. If there are dangers, however, I want to know about them!

 

[masterswimmer]

D, I understand your hesitation to replumb the whole thing. However, all you have to do is cap off the INSIDE of the bulkhead to prevent the water from leaking out. Then you can replace the 90 to a 1" fitting and go with the larger pump. Caping the inside is a piece of cake. Just take a short piece of 1" pvc, solvent a 1" cap on it. Wrap some teflon tape around the base of the pvc and slip it into the bulkhead. I forgot if that one is slip or threaded. If threaded just do this procedure with a male threaded 1" x slip coupling. Real easy stuff. No mess.

Kris, nice piece of investigative work. Might work.

R

 

[Dmitry]

I found this neat modification to the durso suggestion on-line: drill a hole in the cap on the side, not on top. The hole would go through the cap and the PVC under it. In theory this should benefit my set up in 2 ways. 1) It would bring the hole in the cap below the top of the overflow. And 2) One can slide the cap back and forth and adjust the size of the hole. Anybody see a problem with this? As long as the hole is above the current water level, of course.

The Mag 5 is probably not too powerful. It doesn't pump enough water back into the tank to go above the rim!

Russ: That does sound like it could work. I'm not going to do the switch over right away, but I'm glad there's a way to do it without draining the tank!

 

[masterswimmer]

Very interesting Durso suggestion D. I like the theory. Like you said, it offers some flexibility by making the hole 'adjustable'.

I agree on redoing the plumbing. You've always got time to do it over. Won't be difficult at all.

R

 

[Dmitry]

So, not a day goes by that I don't find a snail in the overflow box! Some are small enough to get through the holes. What do you suggest I can use to block them off? Some sort of net over the holes to keep them from crawling through?

 

[nanoreefer22]

So, not a day goes by that I don't find a snail in the overflow box! Some are small enough to get through the holes. What do you suggest I can use to block them off? Some sort of net over the holes to keep them from crawling through?

Gutterguard.

-Kris

 

[masterswimmer]

Gutterguard.

-Kris

ditto

 

[tripstank]

I found this neat modification to the durso suggestion on-line: drill a hole in the cap on the side, not on top. The hole would go through the cap and the PVC under it. In theory this should benefit my set up in 2 ways. 1) It would bring the hole in the cap below the top of the overflow. And 2) One can slide the cap back and forth and adjust the size of the hole. Anybody see a problem with this? As long as the hole is above the current water level, of course.

The Mag 5 is probably not too powerful. It doesn't pump enough water back into the tank to go above the rim!

Russ: That does sound like it could work. I'm not going to do the switch over right away, but I'm glad there's a way to do it without draining the tank!

Or you can just drill and tap a pcv cap, add a valve and you are all good!

 

[Dmitry]

I hope gutterguard comes in very small pieces.

 

[masterswimmer]

I hope gutterguard comes in very small pieces.

It does. It's probably sold in 20' rolls

R

 

[nanoreefer22]

It's only like $4 for a 20 foot roll. If you're in Park Slope anytime I have some extra you can have.