Thought we would cover this important but too often overlooked piece of aquarium equipment. We recently went out to a new service client & saw something that could potentially lead to thousands of dollars in water damage; the lack of a proper check valve on our clients aquarium.  And there really is no way to over emphasize the importance of this piece of equipment on any aquarium which utilizes any sort of sump / refugium / wet/dry filtration system.

Imagine the power going out in your home and your aquarium’s sump overflowing and flooding your house. Not a pleasant thought and not a pleasant thing to deal with.  Our company’s been called out by so many home restoration companies to either fix existing aquariums or completely remove them because of the amount of water damage.  This kind of damage can easily lead to thousands of dollars in damage while the preventative action, the installation of a proper check-valve on the return line(s), usually costs about $50.00 with all the plumbing parts. So please, if you’re installing a new aquarium, or have an existing system without a check-valve on it, do yourself a huge favor and spend the extra money for a piece of equipment that can potentially safe you thousands of dollars and headaches in the future.