It’s been a miserable weekend here in the UK (so no white ball hitting!) so yesterday I thought I might do some of those maintenance jobs that I don’t really like doing. Infact the ones I hate doing.
So after about 2 hours sitting there thinking shall I, well I can’t really be bothered, but I ought to really, no I’ll just leave it, I decided to take out and clean the rear circulation pumps. It’s been nearly a year to the day since they were last cleaned.
So I took out the first 2, shoved a couple of filter floss balls into the holes to stop fish swimming through, and left them to soak for an hour in a solution of citric acid. I prefer this to vinegar just because it doesn’t small as much.
While the pumps were soaking, I replaced the 4 rear circulation vent covers with my spare set, and I also took out the rear flow overflow combs and soaked them for an hour or so. These are something easy to forget and like the vent covers, will get encrusted with coralline if left to long which makes them much harder to remove.
After an hour most of the coralline algae had dissolved from the hose outlets and the pumps were as good as new. To be honest apart from the casings, the impeller and inside were not to bad so I might leave it 2 years before the next clean! Lol
So I set to work taking the final 2 pumps out to soak and putting the first 2 back into place.
The following picture shows the rear section with all pumps removed and you can see all the anemones, probably Aipstasia on the combs. Ignore the Apex sensor holder on its side it’s not normally in that position
You will note the 2 pieces of filter floss in the holes. Whilst clambering to put the 2 pumps back, I was looking down from the back of the tank thinking those are unusual sponges. It was only when I poked one of them I realised it was the back of the filter floss sticking through (what an idiot! Lol)
2 pumps back in, I stuffed the 2 pieces of sponge/filter floss into the other 2 holes for the other pumps and waited an hour for them to soak. When I went back to refit them, I looked into the rear chamber, and in the few minutes before I blocked the holes, a stupid Wrasse has gone through the hole into the rear chamber. And then decided to hide. It was pure luck I spotted him.
So a 2 minute job took me another 30 minutes whilst I tried to catch this stupid fish.......
So with the all pumps cleaned and up and running I also cleaned the Apex salinity probe as it had been 3 months and it usually freaks out after that period so while I had the back off, cleaned and then recalibrated.
So today (yes it’s raining!) I thought in for a penny...... I’ll make some beer and some wine... yes I’ll digress slightly but bear with me I’m going mad with boredom!
So I’ve made some English Old Suffolk strong ale, picture of finished version below after conditioning and ‘one I made earlier’ (8%!) and some Pino Grigio and white Zinfandel (winexpert selection kits if your interested - I also mainly make the winexpert Eclipse Reds which are excellent)
Anyway after replenishing my alcohol stock, I though I know Ill change the main pump, so I did and it took just 2 minutes to swap the pump back to the original and put the spare into soak and storage. It had been in for about 6 months and was pretty clean inside.
I’m sure the original is quieter than the spare but......
The picture below is of my excel spreadsheet up dated including a ‘clean rear overflow weirs’ section.
You can also see clearly under the nitrate test results were I changed the test kit to the NYOS and added 6 litres of Seachem Matrix. The drop is very noticeable.
So maintenance done, alcohol replenished..........