Holiday horror story & Lessons learned...

So...

I arrived home after a long holiday business trip only to find my main pump from my sump/fuge had burned up. As a result of my setup my DT’s water temp had dropped to 68 degrees and the water in my sump was close to 150!

After hours of draining my sump/fuge and coping with the incredibly foul order I have managed to recover the system from total collapse. Fortunately I had enough live rock in my DT to handle to bio load for a few days and it appears that I will not lose any livestock; the lower temps may have been a blessing in disguise.

Lesson learned; do not place your temperature sensor in the DT and the heater in the sump! When the pump failed the temp in the DT dropped and the heater turned on, since there was no water circulation 500w of heat was locked on in the sump/fuge totally cooking it!

DOH! Just what I needed after a long business trip, lol

 

wow, sorry to hear about that, glad that you didn't lose anything. BTW what type of pump was it that failed? I'm in the process of choosing a return pump and was wondering.-

 

Little Giant 3-MDQX-SC...

Pump was about 5 year old; ran like a champ (though this pump does run very warm).

I purchaced the exact same pump; did not feel up to re-plumming for a different model pump. If you need an external pump rated ~1000gph this is a fairly cheap option & I abused this pump for years, lol

 

Firstly, congrats on being able to save everything. That is good news for sure.

I'm curious though, what kind of heater are you using and does it have a temp sensor on it? If not, it might be a good idea to grab one that does. Set the heater to turn off at say 80 and program your controller to turn the heater off at 79 or 78 or whatever. If something goes wrong with your controller, probe, return pump etc.. Your tank won't get cooked since your heater will turn itself off at 80.

 

JBJ Tru-Temp (500w)

This setup consists of a digital controller, 1 temp probe, and a Ti 500w heating element.

The heater itself is just a generic Ti heating element that plugs into the controller unit.

EDIT: Having a backup temp sensor / shut off would have been a great idea

 

150 deg. in the sump That's pretty warm LOL

Sorry for your troubles, I'm glad you didn't lose and livestock! Here's some good Karma for the tank!

 

Most unfortunate, glad it was not a bigger disaster, 68 F would have been the death of my sps for sure.

Again glad it is alright for the most part!!!!!!