It took way longer than I thought to get me and three friends over to move this beast. It is finally on its stand! I'm painting the canopy right now. The LED's are all soldered and glue to the heat sink. I have water in the tank. The plumbing is all glued. So here are my problems, maybe someone has an idea
I have two small leaks in the plumbing. One from under the bulkhead from one return. I thinks its in a joint not the bulkhead (I tied a paper towel around the threads, and its still dry.) This leak is over the sump so a couple drops a minute isn't a big deal, I don't think. The other leak is under the other return. There is an elbow that screws into the bulkhead and it keeps having water swell over the top of it. I have retaped and reseated it a few times and nothing is working. I bought some flexible gutter to catch the drops and drain them to the sump.
I over tightened the male connection into my mag 24 and cracked it. I super glued it back together, but I am afraid to try it. Lots of water spraying all over the walls. Anyone ever fix this situation?
Now the big problem, I have a SRO-XP3000e protein skimmer, aka super reef octopus xp3000 external. The instructions are junk, but the skimmer looks pretty cool and from what I hear its awesome. I can't get the return line to return anything. The only drainage right now is from the overflow cup!
I will break down the plumbing for it the best I can. The drain is 1.25 spa flex pvc. There is a T by sump. One end goes to the sump with a ball valve at the end. I ran this in case the drain fed the skimmer too much water. The other end of the T goes to a Mag 5 (and is reduced to 3/4" pvc). The mag 5 feeds the skimmer, a bunch of other plumbing happens inside the skimmer and there is a bubble master pump at the other end. Coming out of the skimmer is an outlet pipe. It goes horizontal for about one foot. It goes up about 8" then makes a U to drain into the sump, or should I say supposed to drain into the sump. There is also a gate valve on the outlet line. I have tried the gate valve in numerous positions, I have tried the ball valve at the sump end of the drain line in multiple positions and I have tried the ball valve by the mag 5 in multiple positions. There are only two out comes, the mag 5 doesn't get water so the skimmer stays at the same level and makes a few bubbles, or the skimmer over flows and I have to drain buckets quickly or end up with water on the floor. The collection cup fills with water and the drain on its bottom is fed into a few containers I have handy. The water fills very quickly so I don't have a lot of time to think while its operating. Most of my attention is focused on getting the containers dumped before they over flow. I have to have a set plan for valves then spring into operation and action. I have left it running for around 10 minutes once. I have to give up because my back hurt from hunching over the containers to grab and dump them.