eshopps overflow box help

Ok, I think I get what you are saying now. I will have to pay more attention to mine tonight when I shut the return off, but I think you may be right. The standpipe sections should only drain to the top of the pipe IIRC. Although in my head I am thinking that it should not matter how much water is in the standpipe sections on restart, since both side with the U tubes in them should have the same level of water. I will do a test tonight for you and confirm.

What is weird is that the tank section is draining. Just thinking some more about this, are your U tubes the same length at each end?

 

If I understand what your saying, my first thought is,

1. Sounds like the inside box isn't deep enough. Wonder if it's the correct one that originally came with the kit ... ?

2. Or your u tubes are too long (for the the depth of the box inside the tank)

 

One clarification is that the Eshopps PF-1000 overflow box has 2 J-tubes and not U-tubes. Maybe U-tubes would work better? On my 55 gallon FOWLR, which drains into a 25 gallon sump refugium, I also have an AquaC Remora with the pre-filter box. In the sump I have a Rio 3100 as the return pump with a 3 ft head. I also have an old small CPR AquaFuge hooked up in the sump with live rock rubble.

My understanding is that the overflow box is supposed to maintain siphon in the event of a power outage, but I haven't been able to get it to do so in my testing. The overflow works great when I start it using just one of the J-tubes (if I try to prime both, one of them breaks siphon and the other keeps running). I've played around with every combination, inside box as high as possible and as low as possible, one J-tube primed and both J-tubes primed, skimmer on/off, skimmer prefilter on /off. Once I pulled the plug on the skimmer and it was able to reestablish siphon right before it overflowed the tank, but I could not reproduce it. I am wondering if the skimmer and or HOB refugium are causing issues with maintaining water levels in the boxes high enough to keep siphon. Does that make sense?

Any thoughts on how to keep the siphon going? I would love to drill the tank but it is full and I don't feel like draining it to drill.

 

Well, actually I only run one J-tube on my 55. As you have found, when I was running both I found one would lose siphon overtime. Where do your skimmer and HOB 'fuge get their inlet and where do they return?

Also, you may need to just use one J-tube. If the return is too much for one of the stock ones, you could either use a ball valve on the return line to slow the flow of the pump, or to find the next larger size J-tube if available.

As mentioned, I have the same overflow, using one J-tube, and have had thousands of starts and stops and has never once failed to siphon.

 

Actually, you had me thinking the overflow comes with J-tubes, but actually they don't. It comes with (2) U-tubes. If you do have J-tubes (where one leg is longer), then that is very likely your problem! The water in both sides of the box needs to be at the same height after the return pump is shut off or else you will have no chance of it restarting!

 

My HOB skimmer (AquaC Remora) is still hanging on the back of my tank on the opposite side from my overflow box. I took the pre-filter box off of the Remora skimmer for now, but intend to put it back on. The HOB refugium is hanging on the side of my sump/refugium with the inlet pulling from the middle refugium section and the outlet going to the return pump section.

I'm going to try and find some U-tubes and see if it makes a difference. I'll let you all know if it does.

 

Any luck? I know you can get them online (DFS, Marine Depot, etc), and both of my LFS sell them as well. I would be very surprised if this did not fix the issue!

 

Dumped the J-tubes and got U-tubes

Replacing the J-tubes with U-tubes did the trick! Now I can unplug my return pump with both U-tubes siphoning and the siphon is maintained. When I plug the return pump back in the overflow picks up where it left off. Thanks for the help! Thanks to the LFS for allowing me to swap out the J's for U's for free.

 

im using eshopps nano, and its been a year now, never gave any probs... im using almost double the flowrate recomended...

 

Congrats! Glad it was an easy fix after all