Started last night, found a small puddle of water under the far left front corner of my stand, right below where my Top Off Tank sits. I didn't think much about it, earlier in the evening I had added water to the Top Off Tank, I have in the past, spilt a bit of water on the floor doing this. I just figured I had done that again, cleaned it up, forgot about it, and went to bed. Woke up this morning, went to that end of the stand to turn the light on in my sump area, stepped into another puddle of water. Now I know, this isn't water spillage, we have water coming from somewhere and its making it onto the floor.
Now, the hunt is on, where is this water coming from? I start my hunt by looking at the floor in my sump area, especially in the Top Off tank area under the Acrylic Top Off Tank, thinking that the Top Off Tank may have sprung a leak, its the closest thing to the puddle of water on the floor. Nothing, the whole sump area is dry. Still not trusting the Top Off Tank to not have a leak, I got out the pump and removed all the water from the Top Off Tank. Removed the tank to see if it was wet under the tank, dry, that's not it. Your safe Wes
the wife isn't looking for you, this time. So the hunt for the leak continues. Next up I checked all four sides of the display tank around the seams, nothing, dry. I get out the flash light and look at the back of the display tank glass, dry, look at the back of the stand, dry. I do see a bit of water seeping out from under the back corner of the stand, the same corner as where the water is leaking out from under the front of the stand. That doesn't really tell me much though, just means I have a puddle under the stand. Puddle is the word I used for the wife, really didn't want to tell her I had lake of water under the stand. So, I am still looking, not leaking in the Top Off Tank area of my sump, the four seams on the side's of the Display Tank not leaking, the back panel of the Display Tank not cracked and leaking, that just leaves me with the sump area under my Display Tank section. My stand is two feet longer than my display tank, I have two sections inside the sump area of my stand, the Display Tank section and the Top Off Tank section, for those of you who haven't seen it. So at least I have it narrowed down, now just have to find it. Next up on my list, the drain pipe from the overflow box to the sump. My sump tank doesn't fit all the way under this overflow pipe, if the pipe were leaking at the fittings on the glass, that would drip onto the sump tank area floor. That leak would find away to make it onto the floor, then leak out from under the stand, no drip there, that isn't the problem, keep looking. To my way of thinking, I only had one thing left as to what and where the leak could be at, the sump tank itself and it had to be on the back of it. Its very hard to see the floor area under my stand behind the sump tank. I have the back of my stand covered with plywood, to keep salt creep off of the sheet rock walls. So, I moved my skimmer out of the way in the sump tank so I could see the area I needed to see, there it was, water on the floor of the sump tank area, behind the sump tank. It took me way longer to type all of this than it took me to work my way thru finding the leak
Now to fix this problem, I need to remove everything from the 40g Breeder sump tank
I need a new sump tank at 5 am in the morning. I do have Gerwins cell phone number, but I ain't making that call This is where I had the plain dumb luck on my side. I had bought the new 40g Breeder tank for the LPS tank sitting in my closet that I haven't had the time to sit up so, new sump tank problem solved. The funny part about this new 40g Breeder sump tank when I slide it into place inside the stand, I thought I saw a crack in it turned out it was just a thin strand of silicone that wasn't cleaned up when the tank was made. It doesn't have panels in it to help cut down on air bubbles from making it into the display tank, as it turned out, this isn't a problem. The being kind of prepared for something like this comes into play, because I keep 25g of RO/DI water on hand all the time. I had to make some new saltwater for the system and pretty much used all of this water reserve, 15g of new saltwater for the system and 10g of RO/DI water to put back into the Top Off Tank.I did learn that I made a mistake in my plumbing job when I sit this tank up. The quick disconnect to the pump that feeds my manifold system, is to low. I had to cut the PVC pipe to remove the sump tank from the stand. I was lucky that I did have one extra sleeve to get my manifold system back up and running, but I will have to redo the quick disconnect fitting so that I won't have to cut that pipe again if I have to.
Since I have been in the hobby, I have read plenty of tank builds, have seen more than a few people that sit their tanks up on their carpet floors, this is the reason you don't do that. Another lesson to be learned here, and this is JMO, why did I have a tank failure on my sump tank to start with, pretty much think this is my fault also. When I build the stand for my tank, I sealed it with a sealer paint, no big deal, most all of us do this. The problem came when I don't think I let this paint dry good enough before putting the sump tank under the stand. After setting the sump tank under the stand, I had to move it, it was stuck a bit, I had to kinda pop it loose. Did what I had to do, put the tank back and everything's has been fine since. I bet popping that tank loose caused the seal in the tank to weaken, over time that caused the problem I just had.
I didn't proof read this, cause I am now tired and am going to take a nap, so you will have to bear with any writing errors