sump baffle question

I'm in the early stages of making a 10 gallon sump for my 30 gallon DT. I am going to use a 3 plate baffle after my skimmer and am wondering how far from the bottom the middle piece of glass should be. One and three will be glued to the bottom, but what about the middle one? I know they are supposed to be 1.5 inches apart, but I have never read anything about how far the middle one should be from the bottom of the tank. Thanks! This site has been a wealth of knowledge for me as I start up another tank!

 

I also have 3 baffles in mine. Mine middle baffle is 1.5 inches from the bottom and the other 2 are 1.5 inches away from the middle one. Hope this helps.

 

1.5" above the bottom is good.

 

easy answer is, 1.5 inches is good.

if you want to make things way more complicated (like me)- > the closer that center baffle is to the bottom of the sump the smaller the space will be. The "lower" the space the further the bubbles will have to travel to get by the bubble trap. But the side affect of making the gap smaller is that the water will move faster so bubbles may get "swept" through the trap.

 

Mine's about an inch and works well. Answer depends on how much flow you want through it I would think. but you can run a ton of flow through a 1 or 1 1/2 opening.

I added some holes/notches to the bottom of one of my outside baffles so that if you drain the sump the baffle section drains too. Add them to the input side if you like the idea. Won't affect the performance in any way. Easier than trying to manually drain that little space between the baffles

 

Thanks guys--it sounds like 1.5 is the way to go.

 

Another quick question. I found that the perfect size to use for the baffles happens to be the glass I can pull out of 8x10 picture frames. Would this be OK to use? Should the glass be a certain thickness?

 

picture glass is pretty thin and water is pretty heavy. I'd go thicker if it were mine. I did acrylic in my sump and it bowed pretty good.

 

You should use double strength glass. The picture frame and window glass is single strength. You can use acrylic just use the 1/4" thickness.

 

Where can I get glass like that? Hardware store? Cut to size?