New sump design

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noskimmer

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Nick Papahatzis
Yet to set it up, just arrived from the tank makers. My wife and I designed it from scratch. It is made from 10mm glass, so are the dividers, so it is very heavy, it will provide for two tanks, 1 4x2x2 and one corner tank 3x2 with a curbed glass front, custom made as well, both 10mm glass. The sump will sit remote to the two tanks, under my house, it is 1 meter in length the middle section is a standard 2 foot, it is 600mm high and 500mm wide, the drilled holes are safety holes, the (probably 4-5 eheim's) will take care of return, chiller etc, they will sit on the plastic grate to prevent draining the sump into the tanks accidentally (stupid squirt blocked the return hole in the overflow... another story.) onto your lounge room floor. The section under the grate will have a team of 4 jager 200watt heaters controlled by a commercial thermostat with .1 degree resoluton. The bottom of the sump will hold about 40 - 60 kilograms of super fine aragonite, and act as my anaerobic filtration. I will have 1x150watt 20k MH and 1x250watt 14k MH suspended over it in a reverse photo period, to maximize algae growth and control ph (as if the argonite wouldn't) Anyway's here are the picks.






tanks, sorry these are old photo's, the corner one is outside, didn't fit through the door, and the other is just setup, but been running for about 4 years.


 

jojo22

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Sep 21, 2006
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Looks good to me, how about a step by step set up with pics for some of the new guys here!!
 

noskimmer

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jojo22, will try and keep the progress up. Just moved into a new place, lots of sub floor space, and you really can't get a sump big enough to be local to the tank. My motto, which I'm sure would be shared, is the more water the better, that's why I join tanks via a sump. I have just started laying the slab, I'll have to run all the plumbing, set up the auto top off (I have an RO unit), break into the waste line, setup all the power.. blah, blah, blah... too much not enough time!!
 

noskimmer

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Sorry about duplicate post, I can't work out how to delete it. Can a moderator delete this and the duplicate.

Regards,
 

noskimmer

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Finally an update. Slab is done, had to get a couple of beefy guys over to move the sump, but it is now in position, and I am at the stage of filling it up with aragonite, and RO. I will run it with a couple of heaters returning onto its self, just to get the salinity right (yeah, yeah, synthetic sw I know) and make sure it is working as planned. RO just takes so long, my unit is a four stage, not sure what that is, just got the sediment filter changed 10 micron, and the carbon filter changed 1 micron, apparently the membrane is good for 20k liters, so I didn't change that. I am going to do a separate post on the Chiller, such bad designs, so I am going to mod my one.

Remember, this is not your standard sump, it employs a few different techniques, the prototype which I am running at a much smaller scale has been great. This may not work, so please don't try this at home.









I estimate at the moment to have about 40 - 50kg of aragonite super fine sand.

I am going to setup the pumps tonight so that I can get the heaters ready and the water to temp, and dissolve the salt. I am also going to hook up the auto top off, and chiller. I am going to add another two heaters. The pumps will live on the Left hand side, up high so not to accidentally drain the sump, return on the left, I also have to break into the house pluming for the auto top off and waste water.
 

noskimmer

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I'm going to try and push 3500 lph return but will loose some due to head, and curbs etc, I'm trying to keep elbows to a min. I will use ball valves on both output and return via overflow, just in case. This sump will eventually run two tanks, unfortunately the second still can't fit through the front door (curbed front). I will eventually concrete the whole area. There is an error in my description above. Return to the tanks, will be on the left, I have left enough room for about 4 pumps. Overflow from the tanks will enter the sump via the far right section. So in total, the sump should be able to take an estimated maximum flow of 7000 lph.
 

noskimmer

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Ok, started to run about 4700 lph in closed loop, i.e. returning onto it's self, and it created too much turbulence with the sand, so I have ordered two pieces of glass to create another partition to prevent turbulence. It worked fine until it got to about 4000lph, then Doh!! F for design.. Just drained the main section, now got to move the 40 odd Kg of wet aragonite...
 

rockethippo

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Feb 28, 2007
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No offence, but it looks like the bottom of a well. Spooky!! Did you make the hole in your house? Or is it outdoors? It's be pretty cool to have that indoors...
 
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