Sump emergency overflow

Cmp1985 · Sep 4, 2020

Hi everyone. I'm new to this forum and am starting to get back in the hobby after being out of it for a few years. I plan on buying the innovative marine int 50 when its back in stock. The tank will be in my living room and I will plumb down the wall to my basement where the sump will be. I am going to build a two shelve stand with the trigger systems sump on the top, along with an ato reservoir. I have concerns with the sump overflowing and with it being in the basement, possibly not realizing it for a while. So my thought was to install a bulkhead at the top of the sump and plumb it down to a bin on the second shelf. Container will be bigger then the ato reservoir since that's the amount it'll overflow worse case senario. Is this a common practice or is there a better way? Thanks Also i do understand how to set sump water level by shutting off power and allowing room for back siphoning

Biglew11 · Sep 4, 2020

Cmp1985 said:
Also i do understand how to set sump water level by shutting off power and allowing room for back siphoning

You run the return pump and fill the sump until the water from the display tank starts flowing back down to the sump, then turn off the return and wait until the display stops draining, now you can set the level in the sump to what you want it at when power fails.
I don't think most people worry about a sump overflow, I would put a float valve on the ato output so that it would close off the ato line if the water got that high.
however I don't see why having an Emergency bulkhead wouldn't work. If your ato stuck on it would be changing your salinity already. So you'd only reduce the chance for flooding.

Cmp1985 · Sep 4, 2020

Thanks for the reply. In my last tank I had a scenario where my skimmer would go out of wack and start overflowing the cup and the ato would be dumping water in the sump. My other sump was a lot smaller than the one I am going to have so I had very little room for error