Emergency! Sump springs leak.

[eakatank]

Ok. 75 tank w/ 55 gallon sump. The sump sprung a leak last sometime last night. I noticed the pump sucking in air and was curious why so much water evaporated in just a few days. Oh well...i guess i'll bring up another batch of kalkwasser. While refilling my drip reservoir i noticed the basement floor had a nice pool of water on it. OH CRAP!

Well I’ve moved everything that was in the fuge up to the display. The whole sump has been drained and pulled out. Where do I go from here? That sump took me a long time to build and I don’t think I have the time to do it again before the tank crashes. I was running a 55 gallon tank as the sump with 3 chambers. How long can I run without a sum? Bio-load is light. ~110lbs. live rock, 1 mandarin goby, 2 small clown, bubble tip anemone, and a few other softies.
Please help. Thanks
Elliott

 

[lcstorc]

With that low of a bioload you should be fine for a while without the sump. The important thing will be to keep the water moving in the display. Do you have powerheads there? If so you should be ok. Maybe some extra water changes particularly if your skimmer is in the sump so you can't run it.

 

[eakatank]

Yes I'm running one hydor koralia 4 pump now and I have a spare if necessary. The skimmer that was in use is an AquaC EV-180. I've been struggling to get it to skim much of anything ever since I purchased it several months back. AquaC's technical support told me the reason i wasn't skimming was because my bioload could be too low.

 

[lcstorc]

Well then that just verifys that you should be ok for a bit. Just keep an eye on the parameters and do a waterchange if necessary. I would put the other powerhead in to keep the water moving a bit more. Other than that I think you will be fine while you get a replacement sump.

 

[eakatank]

I just purchased a replacement 30g long glass aquarium to replace the leaking sump. I will spend today cutting and inserting acrylic baffles into the tank. My leaking sump was a smaller version of the Model F. The only problem I had with this design was microbubbles. Overflow from the fuge caused bubbles to be sucked into the return. There was also a problem with the bubble trap baffles being too close together. This would cause microbubbles to flow through the trap. What is the recommended spacing for the baffles with a 1200g/hour return pump? Should I build a bubble box for the overflow? What is the best way to handle the skimmer and skimmer pump? What other baffle designs do you guys/gals recommend? With the existing plumbing was able to fully throttle the flow into the tank, fuge, and intake chamber.

Help is greatly appreciated at this point!

 

[lcstorc]

I am no expert on baffles and such so I will leave that question for someone who knows. I will mention a problem a member had recently with acrylic baffles in a glass tank. Apparently the baffles were cut so they were very snug in the tank which you would think was a good thing. However when the sump got up and running the temp caused the acrylic to expand and crack the glass. So basically what I am saying is you want to cut the baffles a little bit small and seal well with 100% silicone so you don't have problems if they expand a bit.

 

[BigAl07]

No acrylic baffles in GLASS tank. Glass in glass and ACRYLIC in ACRYLIC!

Allen

 

[eakatank]

I have already purchased, cut and installed the acrylic baffles. The baffles are not tight-fitting. Should I start over? Will they cause another leak?

 

[BigAl07]

I'll TRY to make some phone calls in the morning (you may want to PM me) and ask around. It all depends on the difference in thermal expansion from one to the next. It may not be ANY issue if there is a gap. It all depends on how MUCH expansion there is. Right now it would just be a guess bro! Sorry!!

Allen