Sump question

Hello i am very new to keeping a saltwater tank i have kept freshwater for many years and with many tanks and finally decided to try saltwater but i have a few questions. I am going to convert my 55g freshwater to salt so all i have so far is the tank heater and a hob filter that i used. Being as its pretty expensive to buy everything you need at once im slowly buying the things i need to get started.So far i have gotten my sand substrate and the salt and next will probably get the rock so i can get my cycle started. My question was I think i have decided to run a sump But i dont want to drill my tank and i dont want to buy an overflow box if i can make one cheaper so i was wondering if i can make one out of the hob filter i have by modifying it a bit. I have drawn a picture of what i want to do and what i might think work but i really dont know what i am doing when it comes to the sump tank. Please give suggestions as you see it or any other ideas to convert the filter to use as an overflow box type thing.

 

Im not sure how well the HOB would convert into an overflow box. You may be able to make one out of acrylic that would work better. There are several DIY designs online. This way you would have a surface skimmer on the inside of the tank instead of having to run pipe from your HOB filter.

As far as the sump, if you want to run a simple sump setup you could just place your skimmer on the drain side with live rock between the skimmer and return pump to block out the micro bubbles from the skimmer. Even better you could make acrylic baffles as a bubble trap and to section off the sump if you wanted to make one section a refugium.

 

Sounds kinda tricky, first off you'd have to figure out how many gph the hob filter/overflow would flow. I assume from the picture you won't be using the pump from the hob filter to get water out of the tank? Are you going to drill the hob filter for a bulk head?

 

Yea that was the plan to put a bulkhead in it

 

So your gonna use the syphon tube for surface skimming, correct? Id be concerned that the syphon tube wouldn't have the gph flow to keep bubbles out of the syphon, which would lead to a syphon break. IMO id save up and purchase an overflow kit for peice of mind, just my .02

 

HOB's do not make good overflow boxes. You need an internal and external box at approx the same elevation with siphon tubes or something like CPR's continous overflow so you do not lose prime in an outage.
You can pick up an eshopps overflow really cheap either new or used. Watch the for sale forums, you see them all the time. I just bought a 1200 GPH two tube version lightly used for $35.