Taking the plung need advice.

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo

Drip or Auto Changer.

  • Total voters
    39
  • Poll closed .
Danger_Chicken;4221230; said:
:headbang2I think this is what saved my fish over the winter when I lost power. I lost one 3" ebjd, everyone else was fine. It was only 9-10hrs but I have friends that lost 75% of their fish in 8hrs without power and I'm stocked as heavy.

I don't think you'll burn up the pump if it's sucking air for a an hour or 3 (it'l be noisy). Running dry is what you have to worry about. What you described is what I was trying to describe too. I don't know what kind of pump you are using but you should be able to get away running it without sucking air at 1/3 full.
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I love my pump its a little giant, I broke the impeller shaft and its still running like it used to for well over a year. This pump was cheap and had out performed those other guys. However your right I can run it much lower, I was thinking about this last night instead of changing the water level in the tank change it in the sump. I have seen it running safe at just over 1/4 full.

So now that I have decided on a drip, who wants to chime in on these questions.

Chemical drip system? aka dosmatic or other type.
Chlorimine filter? from the filter guys?
Large reservoir of previously treated water gravity feed?
 
Go with the chloramine filter. Low levels of maintenance and no bulky mixing chambers and pumps systems.
 
chloramine filter for sure! i live by the KISS principle. keep it simple....;) have you seen my drip system setup thread?
 
If I where to drip 1 - 2 GPH do I need to heat the water? or is it to slow to effect the tank? I am guessing its to slow I do a 50% water change guessing about 100G with only a 50G water heater.
 
Okay so here is my testing without modification please advise.

The Bottom blue tape marker is the lowest level I can run at without sucking air. The top blue tape marker is the level the water reachs when the pump shuts off and the tank drains.

So in my mind the lowest level I could set the overflow for the drip system is at the top blue marker? Is this right? My thinking is ever inch lower then that means one inch lower the water will be when the pump turns on.

I am at a total lost as what to do? The way I see this in my head is that you almost have to have double the water storage you normally would have just to run a drip? I am going to play with the over flows in the tank today and see if I can get it to drain less.

I feel so stuipd I just can't wrap my mind around this Jcardon has a 405 gallon with a 90gallon sump, I have a 220 gallon wiht 55 gallon sump. The two systems are almost the same ratio.

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I have a 220 with a 27g sump that runs half full. As far as I know you're going to lose water to the drain on a power outage. I would run the sump as high as you can leaving just enough space to hold the overflow on power outage. That way when the excess drains during the outage, hopefully, you'll have enough left in the sump once the pump startes to keep the pump form running dry until the drip refills. I don't think sucking air for a little while will hurt it. It will be noisey but that can act as an alarm for you - say if all this happens while you're asleep. Are your overflows drilled, hang-on or home-made? The main tank shouldn't drain more than an 1/2 -1inch on power failure.
 
thats looks like a lot of water that youre draining after the pump shuts off. i think you need to modify your overflows or get a bigger sump! youre pretty much maxed out in sump space when the power goes out, and thats not good!
 
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