Help with my sump design plz!

You need to figure out how much water you will siphon back from your tank when the pump is off. 15G is sort of small, but it can work. You really need to minimize how much water drains back cause you don't have much room. If you make your skimmer section 12" wide and 10" deep, that is half the capacity of your tank.

Even if you left your return section 12" wide and 6" deep, that is very little free board left. And 6" isn't much room for evaporation. The 24" is good, but the 12" is killing you. It's a very shallow setup.

I like free too, but if it is only going to be problems, it is not good. Plenty of small tanks around on Craigs list, classifieds, or garage sales.

 

Haha that brown stuff under the bioballs in my pic would be LR. Maybe I should of labeled it?


Ok so I'm thinking it might just be best to just user a Filter sock and move the skimmer towards the middle like Sarixx advised. Hopefully this will leave quite a bit of room for my Pump/Skimmer. Although I'm not quite sure how a filter sock is set up.

Now that we have decided on a larger space for the skimmer, anyone have any recommendations on a skimmer?

 

Ok, so 8" for the skimmer area then 10" for the fuge that's 18". Leaving 6". Don't forget about the baffle's after the skimmer. I'm guessing you will do them an 1" apart from each other, so that's 2". Leaving you 4" in the return... That's not much room for the return pump.. But maybe it will work, I don't know.. Just a heads up.

 

I've decided on using a rubbermaid container for my refugium and having it gravity feed down into the sump. The 15G is only going to half the skimmer/pump.

 

i set my 40gal sump up very similar to your initial drawing. i did not read the entire thread but would like to point out two things... 1) do not use GE silicone II (i did and have to redo the baffles now as they all caved) 2) im now adding in a 5th baffle in the return chamber next to the main tall baffle to the fuge. this is due to the bubbles i get from the waterfall effect from the refugium. actually as i write this im waiting for the silicone to cure.

 

with the whole water bridge/relying on gravity thing that i suspect your planning on doing with the fuge to sump, just remember that if the power goes out its going to drain water from both the overflow AND the rubbermaid into the sump

 

Heres a quick question that I just thought of. Are rubbermaid (or plastic in general) containers safe to use for refugiums? The water wont start to eat at the plastic will it?