sump? will it work? will it be a nightmare?

[King Turkey]

I have a tank with no stand. 40g breeder. I do not wish to drill it and I hear horror stories of people with hang on back overflow so I do not wanna do that.
my tank is on the floor purely for me and kiddo when I wanna relax meditate. My daughter loves it she will pull up a spot on the yoga mat and hang out and help feed the fish corals. I would like to add a sump higher up. so I can drill the acrylic and do a return via water fall piping or something or the sort. that way all I have in tank is power heads and a return. currently have a Tunze 9004 and a canister filter. I wanna ditch the canister only has carbon and a sponge. will this work doing things backwards like this? will I run into micro bubble problems in the tank? anyone have experience doing this sorta pluming/ set up that can shin some light on it for me.

 

[Hop2jr]

Interesting concept. The big thing to worry about is if the power goes out gravity does not stop but your return pump would and all the water in the sump would end up in your tank and all over your floor with what ever gets washed out with it. I would not recommend doing a sump that way but still is intriguing.

 

[lapin]

Be sure you have an emergency drain. If the waterfall pipe should clog you could pump all your aquarium water into the sump causing it to overflow and causing your tank to run dry.

 

[JoshH]

Interesting concept. The big thing to worry about is if the power goes out gravity does not stop but your return pump would and all the water in the sump would end up in your tank and all over your floor with what ever gets washed out with it. I would not recommend doing a sump that way but still is intriguing.

Wouldn't be an issue as long as the display has enough room for whatever drains back down. This would require a drilled overflow in the sump but that's no big deal. The concept will absolutely work. The only thing to worry about is micro bubbles in the display. There is a way around this though if you had a rear chamber in the display tank for the drain to run into first.

As long as it's plumbed like a standard sump/Display is it shouldn't be a problem....

I would look into having maybe a custom HOB box made for the drains to flow into and have a weir to flow over the edge of the tank into the DT

 

[Hop2jr]

You are right that will work but do you think the socks would be able to filter properly ?

 

[Quietman]

It should work, but for safety and flood you'll need a traditional overflow, internal or external in sump to limit water transfer due to siphon. You could also do a smaller "tray" type sump with algae and some filter media that would be small enough not to overflow. Shallow would allow smaller light.

 

[JoshH]

You are right that will work but do you think the socks would be able to filter properly ?

Absolutely, flow is flow, doesn't matter if it's being pumped up, or dropping down the drain. It will flow through the socks

 

[King Turkey]

Hmm.. I guess just worrying about micro bubbles isn't to big a deal. I am just more worries about flooding. Most likely going to come down to how I set up the drain/ have a secondary for emergency. Maybee

 

[Blue Spot Octopus]

Check out Fiji sumps they make a rear chamber AIO for a 40 breeder, save your self the headache.