my sump set up wont work keeps flooding, please help

[ducatigirl]

my sump set up wont work.
Either the tank overflows or the sump does.
What do i do (apart from rip the ruined carpet up)

With the taps on the outflow and tap on inflow, tried to set up fine tune so incoming and outgoing is the same, very very tricky! the taps are stiff, so cant quite get them spot on.
Today going to open taps and hope the flow is the same, but the pump might be too powerful. the bottom tank overflows.
Water wont run out until the water level is up around the elbow for water to flow out.

maybe the sump tank is too small?
I just dont know what im doing wrong.
Heres my schematic diagram.

 

[Ace25]

Wow.. complicated. 3 things strike me as wrong right off the bat with the drawing. 1. sump is too small to accommodate back flow, 2. your overflow tubes should not go that deep into your water on the tank. You will overflow both your tanks if they are made how it is drawn in the case of a power outage, 3. Overflow shouldn't be tied together into 1 like you have it.

I would do 2 overflow pipes side by side and put a Y splitter on your return pump to feed both tanks.

 

[Amphiprion]

Agreed. Also, are you restricting the overflows at all? If you are, don't, as that will cause flooding every time.

 

[Sploke]

It looks like you are using a straight siphon from the main tank vs. an overflow drain, and trying to control the pump flow to balance it? Is that right?

 

[ducatigirl]

yeah if i use the tap to restrict the overflow, the sump doesnt flood but the tank does.
I posted a thread a couple of weeks ago with a video of the tanks and a photo of all the parts but no -one responded. So i have no idea what i'm doing.
I looked at youtube for 2 days but didnt get an idea of this type.

So i dont know what to do.
and your suggestions dont make alot of sense i am so new to this, straight syphon vs a n overflow drain...please explain?
Should i take the holey pipes off the elbows? they are the ones on the left going to the bottom of tank.
Before you ask why the tanks are triangles, we got them for free, so we made the stand to fit.

ok, now in the drawing theres 2 tanks, but there are actually 3, one at the bottom, the top one is 1800 high.
the bottom tank i was going to exclude and make it a softwater for angels etc. the top 2 for mbuna.
So it has its own filter etc, but perhaps i need to lose it and make it the sump?
here is my video so you can see. the sound you here is the flooded carpet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ijyRNcccR4

also do you think the flexible hose needs to be replaced with straight pipe, would that make a difference?

 

[ducatigirl]

what about if we do it like this?
But then the second tank will be getting tank 1 dirty water.

 

[ducatigirl]

ace, do you mean something like this?
the bottom drawing

 

[Ace25]

Ya, that last drawing will work.. After you do that though your biggest problem is going to be sump size just going by the drawing. I have no idea how big your sump really is so it may or may not be ok. Just remember that when the power goes out and your return pump stops, all the water in your tanks at the overflow level will drain into the sump. It may only be 1-2" worth in your last drawing, but as an example 1-2" worth of water out of 2 100G tanks going into a 20G sump that is 3/4 full under normal conditions would over flow the sump in a power outage.

Also, Marine Depot sells Y splitters for just that purpose. I use 2 of them on my tank, one on the return, one on my closed loop return.

 

[ducatigirl]

thanks
yeah the sump will overflow, its only a small tank I recycled to a sump.
So maybe I can use a plastic storage crate, cos i really want to keep my 3rd bottom tank for softwater fishes. maybe i can place the sump into a plastic crate just for that purpose incase of power failure.Will re do this setup and see how it goes, then if it still floods will need to look at the sump. I've seen some bucket jobs, so maybe i can try something else too. gee a lot of hard work to get this far.
Thanks so much for replying i was kinda lost on this project.

 

[mjordan29]

ive never tried lol but this is slightly discouraging jkjk