Sump Design

[trilinearmipmap]

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.

[Slick Fork]

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



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.

[Waxx]

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.

[Slick Fork]

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.

[JOEL]

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

[trilinearmipmap]

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.

[JOEL]

Also how high should my baffles be.