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Make sure to check your valves


ringwurm

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I had a little incident happen a week or so ago that I thought I should share. That way if it happens to you it might ease the worries a bit.

 

I came home from work and had noticed the float valve that runs my topoff was out of the water a bit. The topoff water runs through my Kalk reactor so I figured it must have plugged up the valve. I ended up wiggling the float valve and saw that water was starting to flow again. What I didn't count on was the valve getting stuck in the open position later that evening. A couple hours later I went and glanced at the tank and it looked like this.

 

IMG_3842-2006.10.31-17.46.55.jpg

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH.. I freaked out a bit. I went out to the sump and saw that the water level was a good 5 inches above the float valve! I remembered reading something about calcium precipitating when it reached a certain level so I went to check reefcentral real quick.

 

I found this article which gave me a little hope.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/rhf/index.php

 

It basically says it is ok and will not really harm thing as long as you can get your PH in check. My ph had hot up to 9.1 so I added about 50 gallons of fresh saltwater to the sump so help dilute things. The ph slowly came back down to normal over a couple hours. I thought for sure I was going to wake up the next morning to a dead tank...

 

The next day the lights came on and it looked almost normal again. The only difference was a small amount of white residue on some of the rocks which has finally dissappeared.

 

As you can see everybody is happy and healthy.

 

IMG_3857-2006.10.31-17.47.26.jpg

 

Greg

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good to hear nothin died....i dont trust float valves and auto top off involving kalk.....u hear about acccidents happenin here and there... i prefer to use a water jug thats pressurized with an airpump on a timer, when on it forces water(kalk)up and out of the jug and into the tank via and air line...when timer stops, its stops...when was the last time u heard of a timer failin or an airpump......

curious why u didnt try the vinegar?

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greg you should invest in an additonal float valve. If your using a mechanical one now, invest in a spectrapure style top off that can run in conjunction with the mechanical one, or vice versa.

 

I really trust the spectrapure style (it uses air pressure so its hard to "clog it") but in conjuction with a mechanical float switch, its pretty dang safe.

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