Sump overflowing

[Solinarus]

Hi,

First time posting here, my wife is usually the one that does most of the saltwater stuff. I just end up doing all of the work, of course! We've had a 220gal for about a year, it came with 2 pumps (guy said I needed to replace the bearings and seals in the reeflo Dart, which I did, but we did not use the pump). The small pump had a pipe going into the tank with a hole drilled in it, which I'm guessing has something to do with breaking a siphon. The sump had 2 blue lines, the guy told me, keep the water between those lines and it will never overflow, which it never did, even when the power went out (bad ice storm recently, lost power for a few days.)

This morning the pump went out, not a big issue as far as water is concerned. (there was alot of water in the sump, not quite full but within the 'safe' area) So I got the Reeflo Dart out and plumbed everything up, the guy had it setup with these black ball looking things that come out of the pvc pipe and into the tank, which there is 4. We turn the pump on (bit noisy, but working) and it sucked all of the water out of the sump till there was about 2 inches left. So we shut the pump off and the sump overflowed (almost, I cut the water line off from the pump to the tank and started shucking water out of the sump, roughly 5 gallons worth). Any idea why it suddenly overflowed? I'll admit, I'm alot lost here, so any help would be great! Thanks!

 

[tkeracer619]

Hi and welcome. Are both pumps the same model?

Can you post pictures for us? They are worth a thousand words.

If you host the file and get a direct link to them click the button above the text entry box that looks like a photo of a mountain. Punch your link in that pop up window.

 

[xxjt2oxx]

Did you adjust that return into the tank at all? Was the sump filling from the return side or the overflow side?

 

[tkeracer619]

Ahhh, I get it now I think.

There are different plumbing setups for each motor.

The reason the sump emptied is because the dart is flowing more water.
The reason the sump flooded is because those black ball looking things (loc-line) was deeper in the tank then the original plumbings siphon break. Simply it was able to drain more water.

Move the loc-line up to the surface and try again.

 

[Solinarus]

Yes, I found the issue, I drilled a hole in the line coming into the tank right above the water, it stopped the siphon, which was the issue. I probably need to adjust it a bit more, but now the reeflo is making a horrid noise, and no where in this area sells any saltwater stuff. Go figure! I do have 3 Imaki pumps, but 2 of them won't pull any water whatsoever. One sounds funny, the other sounds great, but I have no clue on either one. I have one more to try and hopefully it will work. I did find out the original pump was a utility pump @ 1200 GPH submersible (May have an easier time finding one of these). Thanks for the replies!