suction cups for FAILURE!

woke up today, didnt check the tank, sitting here at my desk browsing 3reef (tanks about 20 yards away), and the lights kick on and i have a HUGE pile of sand in the middle of the tank.

the entire right side of the tank has 0 sand. the rock actually stayed in place. (yay for my stacking skills i guess, because the one piece of rock could have easily fallen and cracked the bottom)

i made a DIY holder for a maxijet 1200 i came across that had no method for attaching it to my tank. well the suction cup i used on the outside of the tank to kind of keep some form of balance came off so the vibration of the pump caused the thing to walk to the middle of the back of the tank where it then proceeded to FALL off the mount i made and is sitting on the bottom floor of my tank....

EPIC FAILURE...

tested my nitrates and yes nitrate spike like crazy.... i have 30gal of RO water ready and i just threw the salt in it with a pump to get it ready for a water change.

nitrates are up to 20ppm so far.... they were at 0ppm when i tested a day ago (sunday is my end of the week maintenance day).

the fish will be fine, the softies i have will be fine, but if it hits 40ppm nitrate im doing an emergency water change, otherwise im waiting the full 24 hours for my new saltwater to properly reach equilibrium. and then ill do a 30gal change.

i wonder, would opening up the valve to my fuge help nitrate reduction during a spike? i have a football of chaeto, 6 mangroves, and grac. id assume they'd leech more nitrates if i supplied more water there, but then again increasing the flow could also cause the nitrates to be flowing too fast for them to suck up. hrmm...

either way, i moved most of the sand back. ill take a pic of whats left to move. the point i wanted to make for others - SUCTION CUPS SUCK!:-X

 

Sorry to hear about the issue. I don't think you can increase the nitrate take up by increasing flow. You might by keeping the fuge light on continuously.

 

That sucks. I had a similar thing happen to me. I used a maxijet 1200 with suction cups in the tank and it fell blowing sand all over the tank and onto my corals. I wasn't even home, I was away for a few days. Luckily, my brother did well and unplugged it. Luckily, everything survived and no permanent harm was done.

 

I hate suction cups too. Over time they always fail. Magnets are the only way to go.

 

yeah im going to get the ~$30 magnetic grip thing for the maxijets along with the sureflow 1600GPH upgrade.

 

basically i took a piece of plexi cut it down and used a torch to heat it up to make it bendable. i made a U bracket and on the outside drilled a hole and put a suction cup so it wouldnt vibrate around the back. thats what gave way, and physics set in pushing the powerhead off of the plexi it was ziptied to.

i could make a new one that has an extra bend to support the bottom of the power head then the zip ties are just there to keep it in place not to support too.

heres a pic of revision 1 of my design.....

 

I agree with 2in10's post. More flow to the macro's isn't going to cause uptake. But leaving the light on 24hrs will and you might try clipping the tips of roots or cutting your chaeto mass in 1/2 to stimulate growth.

 

Nice idea and design that looks like it should be quite effective.

 

thanks. it was going to be my 3reef video DIY post, but i couldnt get a video of it edited in time. and obviously revision 1 didnt work so well...

revision 2 to come soon!

@reefmonkey: i will cut the chaeto in half. the mangroves/gracilaria just came in last week from reefcleaners so i dont think i need to prune that...