Disaster almost

Well I woke up Sunday morning and started my Sunday routine of checking the water temp on the storage tanks, running a few water tests. Sunday I normally do a 20g water change and feed a portion of live brine. I was working on a flow problem that I thought was a snail stuck in a pipe.( had this happen several times) Started looking around moving some pipes searching for the clog. All of the sudden my water dropped several inches inside of a minute. Looked in the stand and found the sump draining into the overflow(rubber bin used for this type of scenario) in the bottom of the tank. However the water level dropped below the syphon hole and was still draining. Shut off all plumbing and found a snail stuck on the hole for the return line. In the end it was a piece of charcoal got sucked into the main return pump and broke the impeller. The point is thankfully I had the double protection of a sump overflow else I would be replacing carpet along with the impeller.

 

Great safe-guard. I like to have my sump oversized so when the power goes out or I get a situation like this, it can handle the extra 40 gallons of water from my display until it gets below the overflows.

 

Funny the impeller I bought looked to be an upgrade from the origional. I guess I wasn't the only one whom had that problem.

 

OMG!! I am going to pass this on to my husband right now. We used to have a standard canister filter & a HOB refugium set up. When we upgraded to a sump my Dad was a huge naysayer. He told us is would syphon on the floor and ruin the carpet. I think we need to use your safeguard. I am so glad you arent replacing carpet. I'll make sure we dont either!! K+