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Mostly, I just wanted to see water in the tank.
Aside from the primary motivation, there are several things that I really did want to test.
• Validate that the tank, sump and overflow hold water.
• Validate that sump baffles are water tight.
• Validate that all of the bulkheads are properly sealed.
• Validate that there are no leaks in the plumbing.
• Validate that the overflow standpipes are water tight when using a friction fit.
I filled the overflow and basically just watched for drips into the sump. The seals are good.
Starting from the first sump chamber, I watched as water filled one chamber and then overflowed into the next. There were no leaks. All of the baffles are water tight. All of the bulkheads have a good seal.
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The height of the baffles decreases as you move from through the sump. The intention was to agitate the surface. This appears to work, although I won’t know whether it is sufficient until the tank is in full operation.
I allowed the sump to fill almost to the top and then started testing the return pumps. First the left only, then the right only, and finally both pumps at the same time. Everything worked as expected.
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Measuring the flow through the sump
The Eheim 1262 are rated at 900gph before head loss. To measure the actual flow through the sump, I timed how long it took for the two return pumps to fill the tank a total of 5 inches.
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• 5 inches of tank water is equal to: 71 x 36 * 5 / 231 = 55.325 gallons
• Time taken was: 2m46s or 166s
• Return rate per second is 55.325 / 166 = 0.333
Return rate per hour is: 0.333 * 60 * 60 = 1199.8 or 1200GPH
Filling the tank
It took a total of 1h and 14m to fill the sump and the tank. That’s a lot of water inside a glass box.
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Tuning the overflow siphon
With the tank full and the pumps running, I adjusted the gate valve on the full siphon until water was trickling into the ‘open channel’ standpipe. This silenced the siphon.
The first image shows the water level in the overflow after tuning the siphon. The second picture shows the turbulence in the first chamber of the sump before tuning the siphon and the last picture shows the lack of turbulence after tuning the siphon.
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I did learn a couple of things.
• The siphon should probably be an inch shorter to avoid sucking air from the surface.
• The open channel standpipe gurgles just a little bit. I will have to do some reading and see if there is a way to completely silence this. I suspect it might need to be turned down?
Bare Bottom
There is an interesting effect when viewing the tank bottom through the sides. I’d never really seen this mirror effect as I have always had a bottom substrate.
