yes I realized after my error i forgot to put a cap on both probes, yea our supplier is still getting his water detection pumps all wrong and we are in a massive mess. people seem to not appreciate my critism of the supplier as he naturally MUST know more than me. well I've decided to put that to the test ! considering this bloke does this for a living it is amazing we have such ,massive failures instead of altering his crappy circuit he is now potting the whole thing, really i begin to wonder if he designed it himself !
I'm having to use a uC because to stop the pump from burning out certain running and rest times have to be set otherwise I'd use comparators or logic gates, it seems very easy to get 1 MHz @ 5 V through water and it can be detected and rectified to 3-4 V DC again so very easy to pic up and set another circuit off by in my case I'll use the ADC of the uC. if the probes are pulled out of the water it goes dead so I really can't see why his design is so fragile as it it can run and never stop or just not run at all.
more experimentation going on tonight