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Monday, January 14, 2008

Pump running at 100% power!!!

Well, I missed the local reef club meeting on Saturday because I re-plumbed my tank.  For those following along, you know that my tank is on the first floor and I have a separate sump and fuge in the basement.  The tank has dual overflows and I was running one drain line and one return line for the tank.  Because I only had one drain line (and because of my ignorance in plumbing), the pump was only able to run 10% open.  That meant it was running about 100gph through the sump and fuge.

Well, I ran a third line, so that I have one return and each overflow has its own drain.  Wow, what a difference.  The pump is now able to run at full bore and I am getting a ton more flow.  This will help in so many ways.  I will turn over more water, so more water will be "cleaned" faster.  The increase in flow means that the coral get more "action" and the flow is strong enough through the fuge to suck some of the pods (amphipods, copepods, etc) up into the main tank to provide food for the fish.

In addition, the increase in flow will help curtail the hair algae and the cyano because the water is getting cleaned faster.

In addition, I added a second DI canister to my RO/DI unit as a back-up.  I replaced my existing DI cartridge and added a dual inline TDS meter so I can measure TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) coming out of the RO and out of the DI.

I am a little nervous about all that flow while I am away, but it ran smoothly for 48 hours now, so I will keep my fingers crossed.