Homw made sump idea

[Willbiker]

Hi all

I made my own stand for my 625l tank. I was going for a freshwater setup with canister filters so built it for this purpose however after deciding to go saltwater, I now want to ditch the canisters and go for a sump....however I cant fit a large sump inside without draining and dismantling.

SO...I have decided to copy some others on here and build a diy sump using 3x food safe 94 liters heavy duty storage boxes from B&Q, connected with bulkheads. I wasnt going to bother installing dividers as their will be 3 separate containers.

Container 1: suspended sock rack and skimmer. Bulkhead exit pipe at bottom

Container 2: refugium. Bulkhead exit at top

Container 3: rock/media and return pump.

What are your thoughts on my proposal? What else should I consider. I'm concerned about critters leaving refugium and into pump bay...how to stop this?

Your thoughts would be greatly recieved!

 

[mtfish]

I see issues with plumbing between the containers. On my system I have a 40 gallon tank plumbed into a 75 gallon tank for sumps. I have a BeanAnimal drain on main system, so full siphon between the two sumps. I have an emergency pipe between the two also, which drains water until the system stabilizes. If you do not have similar with this system, you will have to watch out for flooding one container. It would help to have more details on your setup as what I state may not be important to your system. Hope this make sense. Good luck.

 

[Willbiker]

Thanks for the reply. I am going for a siphon overflow from the main tank with aqualifter incase the siphone was to break. I will set the sump water level to cater for the overflow volume should there be a power cut. I was also going to put 2x 40mm pipes between each container incase one was to block. Then I was going to raise the return pump to within the top 1/3 of the final container to eliminate the risk of main overflow if siphone was to fail.