So one Sunday in May I discovered this: Here's the story. Just after 4am on Sunday morning I woke to the sound of house alarms ringing in the neighbourhood. So annoying! Then it registered that the reason house alarms sometimes trigger is usually related to a power cut, so I groggily reached for my phone to check on the tank. The first thing I noticed was that I'd received a disconnect notification from the return pump which was confirmation that there was a power issue. I tried checking on the tank via the webcam but it wouldn't connect so I tried the bedside lamp. That switched on so clearly the power was restored, I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I got up in the morning the house alarm display was showing an error code but I didn't care about that because immediately after I discovered the water level in the DT was abnormally low. The return pump was not working!! Whatever kind of glitch in the power/internet had knocked out the controller for the return pump and it had not restarted again, this had never happened before. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and water immediately started flowing again. However as soon as water began recirculating the temperature monitors started alarming. I watched as the temperature dropped to 23.5. OK, hopefully that wasn't too bad but 15 minutes later I noticed the tank was starting to look a bit cloudy, uh oh. I checked the refugium and found a significant gathering of mini brittlestars. The temperature dip had triggered them to spawn on mass. I have never seen so many little waving legs in my life, they were everywhere. Up in the DT brittlestars appeared out of every nook and cranny, climbing up literally every coral to spawn. I knew I had a fair few in the tank but I had no idea there were that many. The water got cloudier and cloudier so I started prepping for a water change. Fortunately nothing has been too badly affected by that event but it's not something I'm eager to repeat. I do have multiple temperature probes in case of failure but they are all positioned in the sump. I moved one of the sensors up to the DT so if it happens again I will be alerted but having said that the audible alarm is so puny I doubt I would hear it at night. I should probably invest in another temperature probe for the profilux because when that sounds I most definitely hear it and it scares the life out of me.
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Naturally a new tank requires some shiny new equipment. First up was an Innovitech X-filter. I like to feed my livestock a lot and that will surely increase as my NPS corals grow bigger, the roller filter will hopefully help me keep a handle on nutrient levels. In order to fit the above I had to modify the sump a little. I removed the first baffle and the bits of glass that were designed to support the filter socks. I also took the opportunity to replace the standard ball valve. I really, really hated the valve on the Reefer 170, it was so tricky to adjust. Why manufacturers still produce systems using these fittings I'll never know, they clearly have no care for the sanity of the poor reefers who spend endless hours trying to balance the water level afterwards. I had purchased a gate valve for the Reefer 170 ages ago but never got around to fitting it because I don't like to mess about with important pipework when a tank is up and running. It was good to put this purchase to use finally. Fitting the pipework underneath the tank was a bit of a nightmare, the instructions suggest you slide the tank over to one side in order to get better access to the joints but firstly, the tank is god damn heavy and secondly, I had the Reefer running to the right of it so there was just no space. We tightened the joints as best we could and got on with a wet test. The joints leaked naturally so we took a deep breath and had another go at tightening the joints and fortunately that seemed to do the trick.
Since my trusty Tunze Silence pump was too small to power the new tank I needed a new return pump. I opted to try a Sicce Syncra SDC 6.0 this time round. It has a nifty app for control which alerts you if there is a loss of connection, the rotor is blocked or if the water temperature is out of bounds. I thought these kind of notifications would be very useful in the future until I switched the pump on and got an alert that the rotor was actually blocked. What the...? Out came the pump for inspection and the rotor checked but all seemed fine so back in it went again. It started up fine but I just kept getting an alert. Another removal and check but all appeared as it should. My stress levels were rising now, lol. A quick e-mail to Sicce determined that the pump was fine but the controller was faulty. Two days later a new controller turned up and everything worked as it should. That's a great service from Sicce in Italy. |
AuthorHi, my name is Lisa and I live in Derby, UK. I am a self-confessed reefaholic! Archives
July 2022
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