Bob's Reliability Reef: 250 Basement Fish Room Build

[Reefried]

Thanks! It’s been a lot of fun, building it with attention to craftsmanship and details. A primary constraint has been reducing failure modes, and having redundancy where possible.

Using check valves is another part, so I’ll likely have an annual or biannual service to clean one of them in citric acid.

One of my longer term concerns will be reliability of these valves, too. They’re oversized at 1-1/4” which hopefully is more reliable than smaller check valves.

The tradeoff: Control and failure mode containment. Having two full redundant stacks should hopefully be more serviceable and reliable in the future.

Part of the problem I was hoping to solve: I wanted to have more buffer in the sump. There should be enough for the whole system to drain, and I’ll set the max water/ATO height based on a full drain of as much as possible.

Curious what you think, too.

I definitely like the idea of two return pumps. The ball valves is obviously a good idea so you can service one pump at a time. I would bet that those check valves will fail. Even spirorbid worms can cause the flapper to not seal properly and defeat the whole purpose. I am not a fan of check valves anywhere in my plumbing. I could see an argument for someone with a large tank and a small sump to have them on the drains, but even then they are begging for a flood. Having them on returns is not typically beneficial as you should have the return nozzle in the display fairly close to the water surface anyways.

In your case removing or replacing them would be easy if needed, by replacing the bottom half of the ball valves. Keep an eye on those hose clamps as well, even if they are stainless they will rust. They make aluminum ones that look pretty cool, but I would not submerge them. I have had good luck with the plastic ones and I’m guessing you have those on the pump side?