Setting up a sump?

O

Oliver

Oliver
Jan 17, 2005
424
0
0
Perth, Western Australia
Hi everyone, basically, I want to set up a sump and in it all I want is my skimmer and my heater. It dosn't have to be big, like I said all I want to use it for is for the skimmer and heater. The thing is though how do you do it? I have been told that you only use one pump, becuase they will never work at the same rate all the time, but other than that I have no clue.

Your help is greatly appreciated :)
 
The basic concept is to use gravity to feed it, and a pump to return the water to your tank. You can either drill the main tank and install an overflow/weir to control the flow of water to the sump, or use a siphon-type overflow to do the same thing. I prefer having the tank drilled, it's more reliable.

In the sump, it's best to have a few walls, called baffles, to regulate the height of the water and reduce fizz.

For the return, the simplest thing is a submersible pump, like a mag-drive.

I think this is the best page for starting to understand sumps:http://www.melevsreef.com/allmysumps.html
 
ok, thanks for that. If I am trying to make it gravity fed, without drilling and holes, as my aquarium is already set up, isn't it important to match the return pump exactly to how much the gravity fed pipe drains??? I had an idea of for example, if the rate of the gravity fed was 200 GPH, to get a pump that does 300 GPH, this way, i figgured there would be an exact ammount of water going down as up. Would this work??? I only need the sump to be about 10g because like I said before all I want it for is to house my skimmer and heater. What strenght pump would I need to bring the water back?? I guess the height from the sump to the tang is about 1 meter.
 
sumps

personly gravity fed is a problem what happens if the power goes off and your pump stops pumping

you shuld use a self primed overflow like the weir over flow that way only the water pumped up over flows back to the sump and keeps your tank at a constant level the advantages of the weir is that its self primed that means if the power goes off it will still be primed but stop flowing .. witch is good then it wont empty your tank..

hear is a link to site that will tell you all about sumps http://www.melevsreef.com/what_sump.html
 
That's a really important point. The system has to be designed to not flood when the power shuts off. That's why you need a weir overflow or continuous siphon overflow, and not a regular siphon. Trying to balance the flow into and out of a sump will cause endless heartache.
 
You dont have to match the GPH on paper or anything, just get a pump and put a ball valve on both the line comming into the sump and after the pump going into the main tank... water can only leave as fast as it comes back in, I mean you can kinda say yeah its 200 comming down so i'll get a 300 going up and it'll lose some and it'll be around 200 comming back up. Its hard to visualize but you could do a 10gallon per hour going up and thats how much will come down too, as long as its less than what is comming down. Sorry if i confused you. :thud:
 
Hi,
I'm still suffering through the "balance" thing in my sump. However I have learned a ton (through mistakes of course) and by talking with others and reading. Anyway here are a couple of things I learned through trial and error (mostly error).

I began with a 10 gallon sump with my 50 gallon tank. It was very small and crowed with the pump return apratius etc. Also it was terribly difficult to balance the in/out flow. I then switched to a 30 gallon plastic tote I got from WalMart for $7.50. Much more room and much easier to balance due to it's size and because I replaced the ball valves I had with gate valves which allow for much finer and smoother adjustment. Currently I have about and 11' head on my system and have tried 4 different pumps. I started with a Dolphin 1200 (1200 gph at 0'). Bt that was with the 10 gallon sump. It semed to work but there wasn't much pressure. Then tried a Mag 7 with about a 2' head in a 5 gallon pail directly under the tank. and it seems to work OK but the noise bothers my wife. I now have trhe 30 gallon sump in the basement with the 11' head and am running a Mag 24. The Mag 24 puts out too much pressure so I am swapping it for a Mag 18. If the 18 is too much I'll try a 12.

There are some excellent calculators that can help with these measurements. I'm sure someone on here can provide a URL to get you to them.

Good Luck.
 
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