sump design help please

Mikeyp1055 · Oct 6, 2013

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right forum. But will this design work? I am setting up a 90g rr. So I'm looking to do this design in either a 20g L or a 30g L

image-3.jpg Photo by tanka15 | Photobucket

AJsTank · Oct 6, 2013

The issue you might have with this design is micro bubbles from your drains to your return pump....

Mikeyp1055 · Oct 6, 2013

As far as the water coming from the cheato side I was going to have that throttled back so the cheato will have a chance to take in some of the nutrients. I'm hoping the bubble trap will do its job on the skimmer side

mcarroll · Oct 6, 2013

Baffles don't makes great bubble traps cuz the water is usually traveling too fast. IMO they are mostly for setting a minimum water level. In some cases the baffles even introduce more bubbles.

-Matt

philr · Oct 9, 2013

I have a 90g setup with a 20g long for my sump. My setup is very similar to yours. I have water input from the tank into a filter sleeve. this flows into chamber one where I have a skimmer/pump and a sterilizer/pump. the water overflows into the second chamber filled with rock and algae. that water under flows through a sponge into the final pump chamber. In the final chamber I also have a reactor filled with chemipure and nitrate remover. I am already considering a larger sump, so my suggestion would be to use the 30g for your setup. Bigger is better.

Reefing Madness · Oct 10, 2013

http://www.melevsreef.com/make_a_sump.html

Scribe · Oct 10, 2013

I think I would at least remove the split from the return have it go directly to the tank, and not into the refugium as well. Having the drain split and go into the filter sock and refugium might be a better idea. If those both have valves you can control one getting more or less flow. My humble opinion.

Reefing Madness · Oct 10, 2013

Valves should not be on the overflow, side of things, once you start to hinder the overflow whats to keep the pump from overfilling the tank with sump water? The pump is a set stage, I realize that you can and should T off the return to fine tune that part of it, but why would you install valve controls on the overflow?

specialk · Oct 10, 2013

I was deciding this same thing a month ago ..read read and read some more. I wanted to do it like 10 different ways. lol .. Finally settled on drain, skimmer l refuguium l return, sterilizer -- works great for me. When I returned the water I wanted it to get "cleaned" and all good to go before returning it. Just my 2 cents ( I believe that is 200 pesos)

lemonyx · Oct 12, 2013

mcarroll said:
Baffles don't makes great bubble traps cuz the water is usually traveling too fast. IMO they are mostly for setting a minimum water level. In some cases the baffles even introduce more bubbles.

-Matt

I build acrylic DT tanks, sumps and reactors and a good design will work all the time. This is my sump with a 3300 gph return on it.

No bubbles are ever returned to the DT unless I do something to cause that. That floss is on there cause I'm cleaning the sump and don't want the gunk going into the DT and will be removed.
This sump I built for a friend and is a TOTM here on reef2reef and he is using a Hammerhead on it (close to 5500gph) and no bubbles are seen in the DT which I built too

With bells and wistles

This is but a very small example of things working correctly - good design will work - gotta understand the principles

Mikeyp1055 · Oct 13, 2013

Reefing Madness said:
Valves should not be on the overflow, side of things, once you start to hinder the overflow whats to keep the pump from overfilling the tank with sump water? The pump is a set stage, I realize that you can and should T off the return to fine tune that part of it, but why would you install valve controls on the overflow?

Lol I don't know....I guess to waste $5

mcarroll · Oct 13, 2013

lemonyx said:
I build acrylic DT tanks, sumps and reactors and a good design will work all the time. This is my sump with a 3300 gph return on it.

Wow, that's some huge sump flow...I could run a 900+ (maybe ++) gallon tank off that!!

I'll admit baffles are neat - especially if you need a high-water zone in your sump - but I just haven't found a compelling need for them (yet) and don't like their permanence. All things considered there are other, better (for me at least) ways to deal with bubbles....often at the design level so they aren't an issue, or don't get created in the first place. The exact solution depends on the particular installation, of course.

-Matt

mcarroll · Oct 13, 2013

Mikeyp1055 said:
Lol I don't know....I guess to waste $5

I think we've got you wrong on this, just a little bit. Tell me if I'm reading your intentions correctly or not.

Your drain valves would be used to control percentage of the drain water that's going to the fuge vs the skimmer compartment. There isn't necessarily a problem with this, but having both on there introduces the possibility of having them both closed off enough to flood the display tank. That possibility "should not" exist when you have only one gravity drain on your system - it needs to be wide open.

Having said that, I doubt you'd be able to get more than a few paces from the tank before the overflow started, so I'm not sure of the likelihood of a real accident occurring.

Still, it would be a good idea to consider using only one valve (on the sock drain) and keeping the fuge end of the drain wide open. I don't think you'd really lose anything significant doing it this way either - the valve still controls the amount of flow to the fuge.

On another topic, I think you'll be much better off with high flow though your chaeto - maybe even just running 100% of the drain water through there. It'll limit detritus settling there, should encourage better growth too. Getting more nutrients out with slower flow is kind of a non-issue since it's a closed volume of water that's constantly recycled through the chaeto. YMMV...you may find there are other reasons to slow down your flow besides the algae.

-Matt

Mikeyp1055 · Oct 14, 2013

mcarroll said:
I think we've got you wrong on this, just a little bit. Tell me if I'm reading your intentions correctly or not.

Your drain valves would be used to control percentage of the drain water that's going to the fuge vs the skimmer compartment. There isn't necessarily a problem with this, but having both on there introduces the possibility of having them both closed off enough to flood the display tank. That possibility "should not" exist when you have only one gravity drain on your system - it needs to be wide open.

Having said that, I doubt you'd be able to get more than a few paces from the tank before the overflow started, so I'm not sure of the likelihood of a real accident occurring.

Still, it would be a good idea to consider using only one valve (on the sock drain) and keeping the fuge end of the drain wide open. I don't think you'd really lose anything significant doing it this way either - the valve still controls the amount of flow to the fuge.

On another topic, I think you'll be much better off with high flow though your chaeto - maybe even just running 100% of the drain water through there. It'll limit detritus settling there, should encourage better growth too. Getting more nutrients out with slower flow is kind of a non-issue since it's a closed volume of water that's constantly recycled through the chaeto. YMMV...you may find there are other reasons to slow down your flow besides the algae.

-Matt

I wasn't planning on restricting the flow, My thought on the valves were to have a backup shut off should I ever need to remove the sump for cleaning. But I guess seeing its reef ready restarting the siphon shouldn't be an issue. I wanted to have the proper turnover going through the skimmer with a percentage going through the cheato to more or less act as a pod breeding ground.