Diy overflow and sump

I am going to make my diy overflow and sump this week. Pretty hyped up about what I've got in mind. I have a question thou. What is a good gph return pump.

 

What size is your tank and what are you going to keep in it?

 

Tank size is 55gal and I'm not sure what you mean when you ask what I'm going to keep it in.

 

Sorry, I meant what are your plans for the tank. If you are doing SPS corals, you want more flow in the tank and through the sump, and so may want to go with a larger sized pump and piping.

I have a Marineland MJ3000 (3/4" pump and piping) on my 55 (30 gal sump). It will do around 525 GPM at 4' head IIRC. I am not doing SPS corals though, so I wasn't as concerned with flow through the sump. Great pump so far (only running for 3 months now though) and very reasonable cost.

Just curious, what are your plans for the sump? There are some great sump designs on this site; I wish I had seen some before I built mine!

 

Oh haha OK. Well my idea for my tank is a lps and softy dominant tank with a 30 gallon sump/refugium. I'm pretty sure that ill have 3 different areas. First, inlet with filter sock and skimmer. Next will be refugium with heater and last will be phosphate reactor and pump back to tank. How does this sound. I think the size of the sump will be perfect. What is good input. Never done this before

 

Sounds exactly like my tank and sump, LOL. I have an Eshopps refugium sump R-200, so the first compartment is the inlet with filter sock & skimmer department (and where I keep one of my heaters). I actually removed the filter sock as you really should not need one if you have plenty of live rock in the DT and a refugium in the sump. Next is the refugium (sand, some live rock pieces, and chaeto in mine) and my backup heater, and finally return section. I also have a carbon reactor with the pump in the skimmer compartment and discharges in the return section.

Good plan though, I attached some pictures of my setup for some inspiration

 

I'm running the Marineland 5500, with a 10ft head with a spa flex hose.

check out all my sump stuff in my second vid in my sig- total of 4.5minutes.

I was going to start with FOWLR, now even my sps are kicking all and taking names!

 

That's cool! I think that is that way most have it set up. Seems that it would be very productive that what. What gallon is your sump? Looks very clean. Does anyone know if acrylic can be put in as the baffles to a glass tank? Does it matter? I can get a sheet of acrylic for cheap.

 

Ummm where did you go?

 

Acrylic can be used for making baffles. Some have good luck and it sticks just fine, others... not so much. I've tried out the acrylic baffles and during my testing most of the baffles stayed in place. I had a fairly large issue trying to get the refugium baffle to stay in place. No matter what it seemed to wanna pop.

Thankfully this is just a test setup, with no system attached to it. When I do finally have a system going, I will use glass baffles. It's proven to work, has no issues with the silicone holding it in place. It's also not much more expensive than using acrylic.