Basement Sumps

[Reef Pilot]

I have my sump room in the basement under the stairs, so pretty tight quarters. I actually run two display tanks (100g upstairs, and 135g on the other side of the wall) now from the same sump (still ample capacity for power outages). I also have a refugium/QT (out of view on the left) in there, that I can convert to another sump if I want. It can be connected to my main sump with an external overflow. I have all the necessary drain and water supply (incl RODI feed line) plumbing down there too, as well as all my dosing stuff.

In the sump, I have a Vertex In-280 skimmer, Vertex UF-20 bio pellet reactor, DIY ATO, and a single Sedra KSP-20000 (2000gph) return pump that runs both tanks, with T offs for my bio pellet reactor, chiller (1/3 hp Artica), and external GFO/Carbon reactors. I do not use any heaters, and tank temps are constant at 79 F.

I like it, because all the noise is out of the way, and less chance of any disasters upstairs to ruin hardwood and carpets.

[reefme]

Hi Reef Pilot,

How good is this Sedra KSP-20000 pump?

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by reefme

Hi Reef Pilot,

How good is this Sedra KSP-20000 pump?

It's great! I used to have a Mag 18 (1800 gph) to push the return flow to the upstairs tank, and that's all it could do (not a lot of flow either), so had to have other pumps for the rest of the equipment. When I added my downstairs tank, I got this Sedra, thinking of using it for the upstairs tank to get more flow, and use the Mag 18 for the other stuff.

But it had so much flow and head pressure, thought I would try put some T's off for the other stuff. Much to my surprise it runs all the other stuff with flow to spare (throttled with ball valves) without any loss of flow to the upstairs tank. Hard to believe it is only rated at 2000 gph. Absolutely no comparison to the Mag 18.

[sphelps]

For me the main advantages are space, mess and noise. Tank upstairs is dead quiet, I'm yet to spill a single drop of water on the main floor, and underneath and around the tank doesn't resemble a nuclear reactor.

One of the main disadvantages of basement sumps is the extra head pressure so my setup is a little different from others to minimize this. The main pump sits in the top sump which feeds the display while a smaller pump circulates water from the base sump to the other three. The result is about 7 feet of vertical head on the main circulation pump and a combined wattage of less than 100W to pump over 1000GPH to the display.

I built my sump room into a pantry that I will likely convert into a wine cellar if/when we sell the house. It's not done yet, once I figure out all the equipment I want to run I'll rework the plumbing and electrical so it's more organized.