Plumbing a drum into my sump for volume?

I'm at the tail end of my build, this is my build thread with specs... http://www.3reef.com/forums/show-of...coming-my-venture-back-into-reefs-104791.html

I have an extra 55 gallon barrel, closed top with standard bungs that I was going to be my RO/DI storage container before I got one with a removable lid.
I'd like to plumb it into my sump for added volume because I plan to heavily stock my tank.

My question is how would I plumb this into my system? Before or after the sump/refugium? How to I get the water to and from it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I would have it after your sump/fuge. The reason for this is I would be worried about detritus settling in it and causing issues with nitrates. You would want the cleanest water possible going through it. As far as plumbing, I would let your sump overflow into the drum and then pump the drum back to the tank.

Good luck!

 

The problem is keeping it circulated. I don't think it is going to work very well. You at least need power heads in it. Also... such a tall closed container will not help at all with gas exchange.

Looking at your build thread, the foam work looks very nice. But you have minimal live rock in it. If you want to stock to a higher level you need more live rock. Some folks run a plastic tub with rock in it. It adds volume and they want minimal rock in the display tank. So running a open tub would be better by comparison. Don't know if you have the room for that.

There is no way you will ever match pumps. You have to have everything overflowing to the return pump... or you have to pump water over to the drum from the sump and then have it overflow back to the sump. The best way to do that would be to just pump over with some tubing... then overflow it with a bulkhead fitting back to the sump. Put both pumps in the return section of the sump.

volume does not give us more fish... more disolved oxygen in water does. Added volume still needs to be saturated to count.

 

Unless you want to have a 3 level system to let gravity do the work for you, having it after the sump/fuge is begging for disaster. To do that, you'd have to pump water out of your sump into the drum, and another pump out of the drum into the DT. Trying to balance two pumps is a really bad idea.

I would add it as a closed loop system to your sump. Have a pump from your sump send water to the drum, through a watertight bulkhead on the BOTTOM of the drum. Then have another bulkhead at the top (LARGER SIZE) that drains back into your sump, possibly nearby to your return pump.

You could even place a DSB and LR in your drum. The DSB will help lower nitrates/phosphates in a heavily stocked system, and the LR will aid in the bioload.

 

Thanks for the advice guys...

I do have about 50lbs more of porous dry rock that I left out of the DT and planned on putting in the sump for the bio load and am not against buying more if I need to. I like the idea of adding a DSB in the drum but if I added live rock too, wouldn't I need to light it to keep it healthy?

I have a CA2200 pump (850gph) as my return now that I could just run into the barrel at the bottom and let a gravity return from the top of the barrel drain back into my sump, all I'd need is another return pump to the DT.

Would that be enough movement in the barrel for a gas exchange to keep the water oxygenated to increase the livestock load?

EDIT: oh, and I could open the top of the barrel if needed to help air it out.

 

i would plum a pump from your sump to the barrel but run it down to the bottom (make shure you drill a anti siphon hole at the barrels waterline 50 gallons of water on the floor would suck) then run a bulkhead in the tub at the waterlevel you want and run it back to the sump i would do this with a 2 inch just for redundancy i would also rin a decent sized powerhead 350 or so with one of those airetors attached to keep oxygen levels up dump 30-50 lbs of rock in there but please dont forget about the anti siphon hole just think it would work better if you had water current from bottom to top maybee make a spray bar tward the bottom of the barrel to keep multipul upward currents to maximize live rock colonys ..... make sence ?

you have a nice size sump now i would run dsb in there with some cheato and some manogroves lid off of the drum forshure

i have thaught about doing the same thing with a garbage can

 

Am I missing something here? How would an extra 50 gallons of water in a separate drum enable an aquarium to hold more fish? I can see the need for more filtration and oxygenated water due to the higher fish load but not just more circulated water.

Help me out here.
Rick

 

First off, make sure the rock is reef rock if you buy more. Lace rock and other rock is good for decoration, but you want reef rock as your bio filter. It does not need light. Bacteria don't care.

I would say you don't need to use your return pump. 850... with a couple feet of head is a lot for a 55g drum. It's good for your DT with 4 feet of head supplying your skimmer and sump.

Now this is just my opinion... big systems have lots of surface area, bigger skimmers, bigger return pumps, more lights to grow more algae, more live rock ect. Having a small display tank chock full of fish with a barrel of water is not really the same as having a big system. Most oxygenation comes from photosynthisis during the day. A large fuge with macro can supplement the tank at night. Large skimmers do good but not as much as photosynthisis. Overflows can help.... powerheads and surface are actually don't do that much.

So my point is you may have the water volume... but you don't necessarily have the O2 production a larger sytem would have. Putting a poer head in a barrel will do very little... but it still needs to be kept circulating for other resons. So keep that in mind before you stock 200g worth of fish in your tank. They probably would not last very long without power.