Hi, new member and want to know more about sump design

[Michael Choy]

Hi,

As stated I am a new member in this forum. And still figuring out how to nevigate this website.

I have been thinking about having a sump design for my planted aquarium tank. Would appreciate if anyone could share with me their design work, things that need to be aware, etc.

Thanks,

Michael

 

[Tom Barr]

Seal the wet/dry chamber so no air/gas can exchange, do not use a bag filter or sump without some chamber that can seal off the gas coming in from the overflow pipe.
So a typical wet/dry chamber is best. Then seal up with duct tape or foam sealer etc.

Other than that, raising the water level in the overflow to about 2-3" below the pipe is about right.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Michael Choy]

Thanks Tom,

I guess I have to do more reading as I only have external filter experience and thus I have no idea about what is wet/dry chamber. I originally think of visiting my friends sump design and configuration but it is a reef tank.

 

[Gerryd]

Michael,

A sump and wet/dry does NOT differ in any meaningful way, regardless of fresh or salt water applications.

Go right ahead and check out your friends reef. Their setup may include stuff you will not, but the basic operation should be the same..

Do you see on this page where the bio-balls reside? Note how the INTAKES direct the water here? Underneath the lid, is a screen filled with small holes. This distributes the water more evenly and flows over the entire plate, so the bio-balls are ALL hit with water.

http://www.aquariumguys.com/aquarium-wet-dry-filters.html

Do a yahoo search on wet/dry and you will get thousands of results. How to build, design, buy, etc.

This may help:

http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/filtration/a/aa090298.htm

 

[shoggoth43]

How are you getting the water to the sump? Durso/stockman type standpipes in overflows inject large amounts of air into the stream of water going to the sump. If you seal the biotower well this likely won't be a problem and may be beneficial. This is usually done to eliminate noise in the overflow with the general foamy noise/mess in the sump ( depending on the design you used ). Any time you have large amounts of turbulence you'll have gas exchange. Most of the time reefers are rather unhappy with splashing and bubbles since that leads to salt spray everywhere. This is usually not much of a concern with freshwater tanks.

One way around overflow noise is with gentle water flow and minimal splashing. Water will flow down a standpipe and cling to the sides of the pipe silently as long as it doesn't occupy more than ~25% of the area of the pipe ( I might be off on the percentage but it's what I remember ). Once you get more water, you end up with the gurgling toilet noises. The zero edge aquariums use this method for making things quiet. The inlet to the tank is 3/4", or maybe 1" tops. The overflow area is the front and side edges, sometimes the back edge, and then it collects the water into a 4"x2" box which is emptied by dual 2" hoses leading to the sump. Some models have dual 4" boxes with 4 hoses. Lots of area for slow and gentle water flow and in person they are dead silent, at least as far as water splashing goes. Pump noises are a whole other subject. I'm not sure if this design would be better from gas retention point of view. It would seem so as there's less turbulence...

There's also the Herbie overflows as well. The more usual overflow standpipe designs are listed here.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=69372

Here's a good primer on sumps and such as well.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-01/gt/index.php

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S