Will this sump design work? pic inside

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blitzen25bm

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how come your only using half of the area above the water for your media?
 

melonie

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First, I'm assuming that you're going to install a bulkhead fitting or two in the side wall of your 180 gal tank to act as a 'skimmer' but to more importantly establish a minimum level for your 180 gal tank ? If you're planning on using a second submersible pump in your 180 gal tank to feed the 'barrel', or a siphon, then you'll need to consider some way to guarantee flow balance (i.e. the pump in the barrel must have a higher capacity, plus a float switch) or you risk overflowing your 'barrel' with too much tank water.

I would also suggest that you're going to need some form of 'header' or drip pan to more evenly distribute the water being skimmed from your tank into your "barrel". Turn a Frisbee upside down and drill 100 holes in it ?

You could improve your bio-filtration at the same time by glueing in a finer mesh plastic screen covering the full inside diameter of the barrel, just cutting out and side-walling a rectangle large enough to drop your pump through near the center of your "barrel", and then filling the entire remaining area above the screen with ceramic bio-rings. By having the ceramic bio-rings all around the edge of the barrel, and by distributing the water as evenly as possible, you'll have a much slower flow in any given area thus a better bacteria reaction.

As the others have basically suggested, you could also cut out something like a 1" thick sponge with the same diameter as the inside of your barrel, and lay it on top of the bio-rings. Not only would this give you a bit of mechanical filtration, but it would absorb a good deal of any 'splash' of the incoming water, and would also help to distribute the water more evenly among the bio-rings below.
 
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Matak

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The overflow box from your tank fills the the sump. The sump pump simply returns the water to the tank. Is the water level in the tank is higher than the sumps water level?
 

melonie

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spartan said:
How do i match the input and output of the sump so they are the same?
Several options ...

A. Use a float switch in the sump, with a pump that is significantly bigger than you need which goes on and off as required to maintain level - downside risk is that one of those times the float switch will fail or the pump won't start and prime.

B. Use a pump in your sump which is fairly closely matched to the overflow box's flow rate, carefully adjust a throttling valve, let the pump run continuously and hope for the best. Downside risk is that some particles or other variable will change either of the flow rates, leading to a gradual change in your aquarium and sump water levels.

C. My personal favorite, use a sump pump that is a little bit bigger than you need, let the sump pump run continuously, and tee in a float operated bypass valve at the discharge fitting of your sump pump which diverts pumped water directly back to the sump instead of to your tank when the sump level falls. See http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/8539/cid/2084

With all of the above options, to avoid a flood in the event of a major failure, the extra water capacity (i.e. freeboard above the normal sump operating level) of your sump MUST be enough to hold the extra aquarium tank water present between the normal operating level of your overflow box and the low aquarium tank water level where the overflow box will lose its prime.

Also, with option C and especially with option B, you need to have a fairly good idea of the actual flow rate you'll be getting off of your overflow box in order to choose a properly sized pump. I'd suggest a test with your overflow box installed, a one gallon bucket and a stopwatch - then buy a pump which has say 1.3 - 1.5 x higher flow rating than the flow rate you meaured. With option A. this doesn't really matter much and you can use a pump which has any rating between 1.5 and 3 x your measured flow rate and it will still work fine. And remember when choosing your pump to consult the pump curves for the pump's actual flow rating with the necessary feet of head added between your sump level and your aquarium water level (plus some extra feet of head added to overcome plumbing losses). Check out http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/8804/cid/4016 and then click the Pump Curve link below the picture of the pump.

Of course there's also cheap and dirty option D. - just hang any good sized pump near the bottom of your sump and let it suck air when the sump level falls. This is actually the lowest risk option in regard to failure, but it will be noisy as hell, and is probably going to trash a pump on you once a year or so because of repeatedly running dry and pump cavitation.

Important PS - in all of the above, you'll also need a full sized check valve in the line which runs from your sump pump discharge to your tank unless you're using a spray header or otherwise discharging sump return water above the water level of your aquarium. Without a check valve, if the outlet of the sump pump return line is below the level of your aquarium water, if and when the sump pump stops this line can and will act as a siphon and could allow however much aquarium water to flow backwards through the sump pump and into your sump until the end of the return line is finally exposed to air to break the siphon. If your aquarium is say a 55 gal and if the freeboard area of your sump holds say 5 gal, you've got a disaster on your hands if say 30-40 gal of aquarium water is allowed to siphon backwards through the return line and sump pump body and overflow your sump. See http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/8258/cid/2015
~
 
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ashdavid

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Mar 27, 2005
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The best way is to use an overflow pipe in the main tank where the amount of water pumped in will flow into the overflow pipe so there is no matching needed to be done. It woudn't matter if you had 300g/per/h pump or 10,000g/per/h(taking into consideration the size of the over flow pipe, if the pipe diameter is to small water will be restricted and build up until water spills over the top). But if your over pipe is about two inches that will handle a fairly big pump, how big is the pipe feeding the sump? where is this overflow box positioned? B/c if it is higher than the sump you dont need to do what Mel suggested, great ideas, but unnecessary imho.Sorry Mel :)
 
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