Sump Design
 

I was wondering if you guys could critique my first attempt at designing a sump

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...Gallonsump.jpg

It is a tank I picked up fairly cheap. It is all scratched up so I don't want to use it as a display, It will sit slightly below and behind my 100gallon display (hidden in a fish room) and I plan on having the overflow hole at the top plumbed to a 20 gallon rubbermaid below the sump (a sump for the sump if you will!!!) strictly as a safety measure in case something overflows.

I plan on filling the skimmer compartment with xenia to help with nutrient absorbtion. The funky looking structure immediately after the skimmer compartment is eggcrate to facilitate a "benthic zone" something I've been reading about with a lot of interest over at Reef Central (the thread is labeled something about duplexes and is in the advanced topics section). Immediately after the benthic zone I want to put a 4-5" deep sand bed to act as a denitrifier, and stretching out on top of both there will be about 4" to grow Chaeto or some other macro algae.

Please let me know where I could improve this, I haven't started construction or bought any of the supplies yet so don't pull any punches!

Cheers

Looks good, a few comments:

-with planning, your safety overflow isn't required, you'll only be playing with so much water. If you are going to have one, place right at the top so it doesn't drain every time you shut your return pump off
-consider removing the baffle between the return and skimmer. You can build a bubble tower in the corner just around the return pipe and move skimmer to the front. Use the gain in space for the ref area.
-your pump return is about 7 gallons and depending on your setup could be sucking air after a few days. First I would plan for a auto-top off or second increasing the volume. Could also raise the baffles but would have to allow for water returned to sump with power loss.

No experience but looked into benthic zones also. Here's a link to videos, Sump Concept (right now top, second in) has a sump similar to what your planning. Any reason why the DSB can't be wall to wall between the skimmer on return pump areas and eggcrating covering the whole area?

The tank is already drilled so I'm sort of stuck with the hole where it is, as it sits right now I have ~6.5 gallons worth of space over the baffles before it starts to drain.

I forgot to mention that this is a "breeder" style tank and the front pane is only about 14" tall, which again is a little inconvenient. Too bad it's all scratched up because it would make a great little reef tank! I also plan on moving about 300-400 GPH through it.


I like the idea of the bubble tower, I'll use that to increase the return pump area by about 3-4". I guess going that route wouldn't make the skimmer compartment any more turbulent would it?

I 've considered just plugging the hole and using more vertical space in there but I'm putting a calfo style overflow into the display tank (it's drilled in the top right corner) and if it fails I'll have about 15 gallons rushing out of the display and into the sump. That's enough to give me the a few gray-hairs!

Here are the things I would do different about my sump if I were doing it again, hopefully some of these might help you.

First you want as much directly overflowed water as possible to go right into your skimmer pump intake. A corner acrylic box in the sump, or even a small plastic container with a hole in in for the pump intake, will do this.

The deep sand bed will be easier to maintain if it is in a removeable bucket. It is hard to siphon stuff out of a sump at floor level.

I wouldn't grow Xenia or anything else in the skimmer compartment. You want the skimmer are to be clean, you don't want anything to foul the skimmer pump intake.

I would allow more room than is needed for the skimmer. My skimmer barely fits in my sump so it is pain to remove it for cleaning.

I would suggest a modification to the standard baffle design. To most efficiently remove air bubbles with a baffle system, you want the up-flowing water to go fast, and the downflowing water to go slow. A narrow spacing between baffles where the water goes up, and a wide baffle spacing where the water goes down, will accomplish this.

Here's version 2, trying to incorporate some of the great ideas

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...allonsump2.jpg

The intake zone is now a 4"x6" by 6" high little chamber with the skimmer right beside it. Is 6" too low? I just want to make sure the skimmer isn't sitting in too much turbulence. The skimmer compartment is 6"x13" and the skimmer is 5x5 (Tunze 9010) so there should be tons of room there.

The fuge/benthic zone stayed the same. I think I will use a little tupperware dish or something similar for the DSB.

The different spacing in the baffles made sense so the distance between the first 2 is 2" and it narrows to 1" for the upward side.

The return area got 2.5 more inches of length and 1 inch worth of height to take my return area capacity up to 9.3 gallons. Will having all my compartments at the same height be detrimental? In my original I had the compartment breaks at 10" on the intake side, dropping to 9" on the output side to encourage water to flow in the "proper" direction, I'm thinking this probably doesn't make a difference as the water goes in 1 end and out the other, it has to flow properly right??

Thanks for the suggestions and keep'em coming.

Instead of a permentant bubble tower, you can use a peice of 2 or 3" PVC and get exactly the same function and it can be removed in necessary.

I have a bubble tower built into my sump and wish I had not put one in.

I suppose I could, couldn't I. Like I said earlier, my big concern as far as the intake zone goes is making sure that the skimmer has relatively peaceful water to work in.

I am thinking of also building a sump using an old 33gal tank. There is some very good ideas here that I will also follow.I just have a few questions, my tank has two over flows on each corner would you have them both go to the skimmer area or one in the skimmer and one where the return pump is? I have two 1 1/4" bulk head fittings in my over flows what do you suggest for a stand pipe? I don't want a lot of noise or gurgle noise from it.

I don't mean to hijack the thread just some good info here.

jospear

I would send them both to the skimmer area, if you send one overflow into the return pump area you will get air bubbles back in your tank.

Also how high should my baffles be.