Poor Man's Sump & Filter

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jerky1280

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Dec 16, 2002
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I have been tossing around the idea of building a sump out of a 10-gallon I have laying around for my 35gallon (soon to be upgraded to a 55). Here is my plan:
sump_drawing.jpg

This would serve as both a sump and filter. I'm hoping to use large and small gravel as filter material. Hopefully this setup will be easy to clean every month or two (just dump it out and rinse), keep my aquarium filled to a set level, make water changes easy, and best of all, be really cheap! My question is, how much flow should I plan on having (I've been told 200-300gph). For that flow, what size pump should I use, and what size pipe for the overflow (I'm going to build a hang-on type).

My aquarium is underfiltered as is, and this way I could build my own overflow, sump, and have great filterage (is that a word?) for under $50. My poor college student funds don't really give me much leeway to spend more.
 
Because of Murphy's Law - If the heater is there and the sump runs dry, the heater will probably break.

Unless I missed some technological reason?
 
Understood. I just figured that if my sump ran dry I would have a lot bigger things to worry about than a burned-out heater...like several gallons of aquarium water running all over the floor.
 
Sumps carry all the water level variation, the tank stays at overflow level all the time. In you diagram, the pump and heater together will go dry with only a little evaporation beyond what is shown. that is a small-volume partition. The heater should be in whatever section of the sump has the largest volume - as you have in your revision, that is more comfortable to me.

Are you planning on vacuuming the various gravel beds frequently? You do need to get the gunk they will capture out before it either clogs or skyrockets the nitrate. I'd probably use sponges as easier to maintain, but gravel will do the job.
 
I figured that I'd just clean them out periodically (every month or so?). My line of thinking is that they will act just like a large canister filter. Isn't that what a canister filter does? Hold the gunk (for lack of a better word) until you change the media? Is there some other media other than gravel (or the equivalent) that would do the job better?

My primary reason for the small-volume partition was for in case the overflow clogs for some reason, the pump will only pump the contents of the small-volume partition into the tank, rather than the entire volume of the sump.

After some reading, I realized that what I want to do is similar to a wet/dry or trickle filter, but without the dry part.
 
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Unless I missed something, I don't see any inherent problems with this design! There are no measurements given, so we can't assume the size of the pump area. For ease of conscience, double the width of the pump area (proportionally to the rest of the picture) and it should run fine. I think it's a great overall design and GO FOR IT! Only problem is that 10 gallons is small to incorporate all these ideas.

One thing I'd suggest is to slow the flow of water to about 10 times the volume of your sump (total usable volume of water) every hour. This is if you are going to have live plants in there. They won't be able to uptake nutrients and live well with too much current. Also, this setup may be difficult to do with any plants in a 10 gal tank. There won't really be any room for planting! I'd go with a 20 or 29 gal and use that for your 55 gal. I'd go with more flow if you decide to go without the plants, though, maybe 20 times the sump volume/hour. I really like the whole idea of a freshwater refugium though! I have been planning to incorporate the idea into one of my tanks for a while now. Best wishes to you on your setup.
 
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I just found this great link for a diy canister filter using a home drinking water filter as the canister, and filling it with standard marine media.

http://www.aquaticsbykr.com/DIYCanisterFilter.htm

I'm thinking that I might use this instead of the gravel filtration, or maybe use large gravel as a sort of pre-filter for the canister. I'm gonna have to take a trip to home depot to check out these drinking water filters as a possibility. Thanks to everyone that has given input so far!
 
looks like a decent plan. I would have a large sponge or filer floss across the top of the first chamber to act as a prefiler though. Take that out periodically and rinse it and wring it out and you shouldn't have to touch the rest of the media for long stretches of time.
 
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