Opinions - My Sump Layout & Plumbing

[djcmeeks]

Hello All,

Can you guys give me some feedback on my design? My display tank is a 70g Oceanic and the Sump is a 29g All-Glass. I will also have a 175w HQI Halide, 65x2 PC, 80lbs live rock.

[TropTrea]

Sounds simular to my old sump omly it was a 30 gallon tank.

The problems I ran into was that I used Acrylic to divide it into three sections.
1, skimmer chamber.
2. refudium chamber
3. sump chamber.

Problem 1 I wish it would have been longer rather than just three chambers of about 10 gallons each max. The refudium chamber especially should have been much much larger.

Problem 2 Glass tank and Acrylic dividers with silicone to hold them in place. When the sump got low about 6 inches under the refudium level the divider collapsed into the sump section. The fix for it was to add additional acrylic braces near the top of the sump section that made it difficult in servicing the return pump.

My new system will consist of three seperate vessels for each of these. A 20 gallon tank for the skimmer to sit into (I hope this will be large enough), A 70 gallon refudgium (can you go to big on a refudium?), and a 30 gallon sump.


Dennis

[djcmeeks]

My baffles are made out of glass. Hopefully I won't have the problems you did. Thanks for the heads up.

[Keelay]

The first question in designing a sump is are you planning on implementing an auto top off?

That can help conserve sump real estate for your refugium and skimmer sections by severely reducing the size of the return section. If you can go ATO. It's a huge headache saver.

That being said. I usually advise to plumb the refugium from the drain. Two reasons.

1)First the detritus coming from the display overflow is useful in the refugium. You won't get that from you pretty clean water that your pumping back to the display.

2)Second you loose potential display flow that you could have had. The drain doesn't take electricity and is free to run.

I also recommend the sump-a-fuge that cerrata designed. It eliminates unnecessary bubble traps (More saved real estate, yea!). I have implemented it and am quite happy with my results. Bubbles are history.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=119898&papass=&sort=1&thecat=500