Overflow or no?

Julia · Mar 28, 2014

I'm brand, brand new to this game. I've been reading about setting up a coral reef tank for 2 weeks straight and I'm ready to start slowly assembling.

I found a 90g with an overflow for a very good price and I was wondering if I should jump on that. What are the pros/cons to having an overflow?

Any articles or anything or just advice is appreciated.

Also, just for kicks, if you want to link your favorite articles or videos or books for beginning SW/Reefers, be my guest!

mike007 · Mar 28, 2014

Having a overflow will mean you will have to add a sump which will increase your tank volume which will help you keep parameters more stable.

salttanklife · Mar 29, 2014

I would suggest going ahead and go with the built in overflow and sump now. If you decide later on that you wanted to run a sump on your tank, you'll have a overflow box hanging off the back of the tank. Running a tank with a sump has a ton of advantages and cleans the look of the tank up. You can hide your heater and protein skimmer in it, and depending on the type of filtering you decide to go with, you can save yourself a lot of work. My tank drains into a sock that I take out every 5 to 7 days and replace it with a clean one. I take the dirty sock and throw it in the wash with a little bleach and it's ready for next time. It beats dealing with a canister filter any day of the week in my opinion

redfishbluefish · Mar 29, 2014

What type of overflow on this 90? An internal overflow (all within the confines of the tank walls) or an HOB (hang on back) external overflow? You would preferably want an internal overflow.

+1 to what Mike said above. In addition, the sump allows you to "hide" the unsightly stuff, like heaters, skimmers, reactors, etc., and also allows the addition of a refugium.