My first sump test.

Hey all! been busy lately, but wanted to post the results to my first sump test, everything went slow at first, leaks, couldn't match the flow in and out of the sump, added the flow control later and made a few tweeks all is well and doing great, I unplugged my equipment to simulate a power outage and the sump handled all the flow back, no worries! there. I am pumping 770 gph and seems to be more than enough, there is so much flow that I may be able to remove 2 of my powerheads, thats awesome, I hate those things there so huge.

 

All I need now is another bag of Salt, about 15 gallons of RO water and to decide what mud I am going to use in the refugium, i'm excited

 

sounds like you re all set to go!

 

Yea! its going to be great to get all that stuff out of my DT. Today I am going to trim hoses to fit and get it ready to go. it will be a little while before I get lighting for the refugium so I wonder if it will be OK to have the mud in there before I have lights?

 

Hmm! I am going to replace that flex-hose, I can't get it to seal right at the fittings. Time to make a trip and get me some 1' rubber hose.

 

Will I learned quite fast the dis-advantage to using rubber hose for my drain line, I wanted flexiable, but not stiff and unworkable. I sure will be going with PVC when I upgrade my DT. Ran my sump on a overnight test, I maintained 5' of water in my overflow box with only a slight change. Good to go, passed all my test.

 

It will be perfectly fine to setup the refugium mud without any lights. Your setup looks great, looking forward to seeing more update.

Dan

 

So I am not sure what I am looking at. What is the white tube sticking out of the sump... not the drain line, the other one? Is it just sitting there doing nothing?

One thing should be noted... not trying to be critical... you should never throttle your drain flow. The valve you have in your drain line half open is a very bad practice. It should be on the return pump if you need to control flow. You can overflow your tank.

I'm not sure what troubles you were having matching flow into and out of your sump. Water pumped out goes to tank, overflows, back to sump. I could be missing something.

Generally you want to use power heads and not return pumps for flow in the DT. I certainly realize some folks do not like the sight of power heads and it is not the end of the world. On smaller tanks power use usually isn't a big concern. Just get your tank set up and see how it goes. Once you get stuff in there flow will be reduced. You may still be able to get rid of PHs, I'm just saying wait and see when everything is in.

Keep going, looks great.

 

Ooh! that white hose is just doing nothing, hahaha! but I did replace that flex-hose. The reason why I needed to control the flow out of the overflow was, because the pump could not return as fast as it was draining out of the overflow box, so the overflow would almost empty and suck air, I should have bought a higher rated pump. I never done sumps before so I am learning

 

That's cool... and the one thing I have never had was a overflow box. I saw your aqualifter.... but just so we are clear.... are you pumping into the overflow bow??? I mean it is siphoning properly and the aqualifter is so you don't loose siphon and you had to throttle flow because it would empty and surge?

I guess I'm asking is your return pump putting water in your tank and it's overflowing... you are not trying to balance two pumps right?