Sump design for lagoon tank

[Akutila]

Guys, I need your help on something. I've been designing the sump for my upcomping reef tank and I'm struggling with the compratments for filter socks. With the current plan below there are places for 3 x 2 socks in paraller. The idea in this plan is to put fine filter socks to upper holes and the coarse socks with GFO and carbon below. The leftmost narrow compartment is for water entering via algae scrubber and the lowest compartment in the middle is for return pump.

The problem with this design is that the grits on paraller socks should be the same size (at least if you want to clean them on same time...). So I would like to have them in series so I could use the socks with decreasing grit size to extract larger particles first and go for smaller ones with last socks. But I'm afraid that this design would lead to a high velocity river with water running through dirty socks on a 5" tunnel with over 660Gph.

Have anyone here been wondering the same and aiming to put the socks in series?

 

[saltyphish]

Why not use media reactors instead of adding the media in filter socks? It would be more efficient wouldn't it? I thought about using the socks in series and in the end decided to not bother with it. Seems like more work to me.

 

[PaulKreider]

I agree with using a reactor also, it would be more efficient than bags.

Also note if you put finer filter socks first the larger more open filter socks would be practically useless. You should put larger socks first followed by the finer socks.

For example 400 micron> 200 micron> 100 micron, the same way an ro/di unit works.


EDIT: My bad, I was confused by the first paragraph, seems like you have it in order.

 

[Akutila]

I'm planning to reduce the amount of separate reactors and reactor pumps since this would also reduce the amount of servicing and making the media replacement easier. In my experience the active reactor especially with carbon will produce some carbon dust since the granulates are rubbing against each other. The media socks would also be as open as possible to avoid clogging of the socks. I'm planning to use some from Royal Exclusiv: http://royalexclusiv.net/Dreamboxes...lter-bag-filter-socks-with-grit-800::853.html

If I'm not mistaken, especially the carbon reactor would be most efficient when the water is moving through it relatively slowly. Although even if the socks would be in paraller, the velocity would be quite a lot if the Gph rate is high.