Neil Frank;64277 said:
tell us your latest thoughts on sumps vs no sumps.
How do you currently deal with air from the overflow... and its affect on CO2 loss (if any)? If you have already discussed this in another post, provide link. I have learned to like my sumps, but dont load it with lots of media. Instead a couple sheets of 2" coarse poret filter pad, and use the compartments with light over the glass lid for storing extra plants. Since CO2 is heavier air (O2 & N2), i dont worry as much about sealing sump with tape to prevent lose of CO2.
Latest? I like them? Is that good enough? hehe
Well, they do maintain about 1-2ppm higher of O2 throughout the entire 24 hour cycle vs even the higher cansiter filter flow rates and over sized systems, and at about 1/2 the required flow rates.....so 12000 GPH filter with 2 large Ocean clears is less able to maintain higher and more stbailty O2 and handle the fish load as say a 600gph wet/dry.
Ever try and clean a OC filter? PITA if they are under the cab, the Ehiem or Rena are oaky..........but the larger the canister filter, the bigger PITA they are.
I have some 2260's at client's, I hate them.
The wet/drys are just a lot easier to clean and deal with.
If the overflow sucks some air, so what?
It just ends up in the sealed wet/dry section, just enters into the solution as a dissolved gas, same for the degassed CO2, the chamber simply acts like a gaint CO2 reactors, some folks inject it in to the wet/dry chamber for that matter.
As long as that part is sealed, then the open end of the sump is fine, since there's no turbulance in that section, it can be open, just ike the top of the aquarium is. You just avoid tubulance there, movement is good.......just not breakign the water's surface. In the we/dry section, it does not matter since there is nowhere else for the gas to go other than into dissolved form.
George Booth, Myself and Steve Dixon all came to this same conclusion about 13 years ago or so now. We used pH to see if there was a difference and where it was. By reduction of the spill height for the prefilter overflow(most folks all do this these days) and sealing up that wet/dry section, the pH is rock steady for both cases, thus one may conclude with those modifications, there's no CO2 loss and the O2 is still increased higher than a canister since O2 and CO2 act independently and you are adding air, which is 21% O2 so the tough to dissolve O2 has a good place to interface with the water.
You can store extra plants, but I have buckets outside for that if I have any. I compost or sell them asap.
You'd have to search long and hard to find that APD post from STeve George and myself, we did agree 100% on that, all 3 of us.
The good old days.
