A few questions

[Melonbob]

1. I have the tank up and running, but there is alot of sediment in there. I don't think I rinsed the sand well enough. Anyways, it settled on its own when the tank was off, but as soon as I started up today, it went for a crap again. Will this stuff go away, or should I run the old biowheel with a couple of cartridges for a couple days?

2. I went with a stockman standpipe, no room for a durso. It works well, with the mag 9.5 anyways. However, every minute or so, the level drops, it sucks a bit of air, and flushes like a toilet. I googled, and it seems like its a common enough problem, but I can't seem to find what people actually do to fix it?

3. How little of a drop can I get away with on the overflow/stockman. The shorter the drop, the quieter the tank. Right now I have it almost level with the level of the overflow, that way there is no noise at all. Is this ok?

I'm gonna take pics tonight, let everyone see the finished product, look in my build thread later!

 

[Melonbob]

Problem 2 solved. I drilled the air hole in the top from 1/8 to 5/32. No more flushing

Another question, what if these things plugged? I drilled 4 3/4" holes in each one, but I have this fear of them plugging, or for some reason not keeping up to the mag 18, and overflowing my display tank.....

 

[yote]

#1-Just let everything run untill the sediment clears itself.Your skimmer should help get a lot of it.And it wouldnt anything to hook those HOB filters to help.

#3-I've got the water close to the top of my overflow.And it doesnt seem to do any harm with my dorsos.

And to keep the drains for clogging,Just clean the holes out when you do your water changes.

 

[Rcpilot]

The pump can't overflow the tank. When the overflows clog and stop draining, the pump runs outta water.

If you are worried about the overflows flooding the sump--they can't. The water only flows OUT of the tank as fast as the pump puts it back in. The pump is what regulates your flow, not your overflows. Most people oversize their overflows anyway, so there's not much chance of "over-pumping" them and flodding the tank. The sump would run dry before then anyway.

 

[Melonbob]

I been having simple moments the past few days, I just wasn't thinking that the return would suck dry before flooding my house.......

I'm a little fried from trying to get this all up and running......lol

 

[Rcpilot]

I know the feeling. Been there a few times myself in this hobby.

 

[ccCapt]

4 holes sounds like it should be fine, but if you want to feel better, drill 4 more above those as a safety. The 4 above will only come into play if the bottom 4 get clogged.
Depending on how much water is in the section of your sump where the return pump is, it can flood your tank if the overflows got totally blocked. All the water in that section would be pumped into the tank till the pump ran dry.