douggiestyle
Aquarium Advice Freak
sorry ive been gone so long, work has been annoying.
an interesting thing occurred to my tank about six months back. i thought i would share it with everyone.
i came home one evening and my sump was sucking air. not enough water. as i had installed a float switch connected to a solenoid valve for a auto top off, i was a bit concerned. it turned out that the float switch was stuck in the off position (to much calcium deposit). it was a new installation (1-2 months old). so i cleaned off the calcium, loaded the kids in the car and went to an octoberfest. i came home about 6 hours later and saw that the tank water was pure white almost completely opaque (visibility was less than an inch). you can only imagine my horror. the carpet was completely soaked.
so many factors were involved. i had recently put in a new ro/di (apx 1 week prior), i found that i had not seated the membrane properly so instead of having a flow of 35gal per day my flow was around 35gal per hour. when i ordered the new ro/di i also ordered some new kent lime for my kalkreactor which is connected after the solenoid valve for a lime water auto top off (it truly is sweet). so i had completely loaded my reactor with 450g of kent's lime. the float switch became prematurely covered with calcium due to the also recent switch to iron oxide hydroxide based phosphate sponge (i found out that the iron oxide hydroxide causes calcium to precipitate, randy holmes-farley, http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/rhf/index.htm). when i cleaned the switch to get it to come on, i didnt check that it shut off. errors all around. errors that when added up equal one major disaster.
gotta go, i will continue this topic with part 2 in a few days.
doug
an interesting thing occurred to my tank about six months back. i thought i would share it with everyone.
i came home one evening and my sump was sucking air. not enough water. as i had installed a float switch connected to a solenoid valve for a auto top off, i was a bit concerned. it turned out that the float switch was stuck in the off position (to much calcium deposit). it was a new installation (1-2 months old). so i cleaned off the calcium, loaded the kids in the car and went to an octoberfest. i came home about 6 hours later and saw that the tank water was pure white almost completely opaque (visibility was less than an inch). you can only imagine my horror. the carpet was completely soaked.
so many factors were involved. i had recently put in a new ro/di (apx 1 week prior), i found that i had not seated the membrane properly so instead of having a flow of 35gal per day my flow was around 35gal per hour. when i ordered the new ro/di i also ordered some new kent lime for my kalkreactor which is connected after the solenoid valve for a lime water auto top off (it truly is sweet). so i had completely loaded my reactor with 450g of kent's lime. the float switch became prematurely covered with calcium due to the also recent switch to iron oxide hydroxide based phosphate sponge (i found out that the iron oxide hydroxide causes calcium to precipitate, randy holmes-farley, http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/rhf/index.htm). when i cleaned the switch to get it to come on, i didnt check that it shut off. errors all around. errors that when added up equal one major disaster.
gotta go, i will continue this topic with part 2 in a few days.
doug