Murphy's Law!

[Joshsmit56001]

The subject says it all. After the excitement of getting a new pump (Mag 9.5) and my LED's for moonlights, all hell has to break loose. After messing with my configuration for at least 6 hours, with many failures, I thought that I had everything adjusted so that it would be ok. Not the way I wanted it to be but ok, so I thought. What I have for an overflow on my 30 gallon is just a 1" bulkhead with a 90 degree elbow facing up with a T and 2 strainers attached to the sides. This has worked for me for over a year now, the only thing I ever wanted to do was have more waterflow through the sump and put a SCWD on my return up to my main tank. So I put the new pump on and the old overflow couldn't handle the new flow. I try to make a sort of durso standpipe and thought that I had it all situated. WRONG! I come home from class and have 5 gallons of water all over the floor! I was pissed. I shut down everything and clean up the water mess. What happened is the standpipe sucked too much water out of the maintank into the sump for some reason, and the pump could not keep up. After I clean up everything, I go back to Home Depot for the 2nd time and try to make a Stockman standpipe work for my tank. Ehhhhhhh! Doesn't work either. So I have ran out of Ideas so I put the single strainer back in the elbow and start the tank up again. It makes the irritating gurgling sound like no tomorrow. As I am fiddling with a 1" endcap from the standpipe ideas, I figure what the heck, I'll put it on top of the strainer and see what happens. SUCCESS!!!! The gurgling stops and the overflow can keep up with the pump without having to turn it down. I was so excited I almost flipped out. After the final success of the new overflow and the new moonlights, I felt good and decided to redo all of my wiring. Tank has never looked better now! Just shows that two days of heartache can have a bright ending.

Hope you like my story,
Josh

P.S. I'll be posting pics of all this soon.

 

[Mopieo]

why not use your pump just for water movment and run your sump with just one pump. this way you will never overflow because the displacement and top-up of water is controlled by one pump. this may be what your doing but i was a little confused with your post.

 

[ellisz]

I don't see how the overflow can drain the water faster than the pump is supplying it. Normally the overflow can't handle the pump and it overflows at the tank. Or the power was interrupted and the sump could not handle the water draining back down to the sump either from not enough room in the sump or not having a siphon break at the tank.

Glad you got it going though