Sump Idea, Let Me Know What You Think

Well here it is, I have a 15 gallon tank right now, and I have an old 10 gallon just sitting there. Is there any way I could make this work.

My idea was to get a power head and turn it upside down to pump water out of the 15 and into the 10, then run the water over some live rock and a nice deep sand bed, then get another power head to pump the water back to the 15. I have never had a sump, or seen one(sorry this town is small and the LFS sucks). Will this work when the power goes out, or will the water still want to syphin out? Also will I need to light the sump if I only have sand and live rock? If so what kind of light will work, I have an old daytime 15watt cover will this work?? Or should I just set the 10 gallon up as another nano, LOL. Any info will be great, thanks,

Birchell

 

I would not recommend this without an overflow. If one of your pumps operates faster than the other when considering gravity and head pressure you will overflow one of the 2 tanks and leave the other dry this burning out a power head as well. If you look in the forum you will some some people diagrams and you can also loo at the pics under sumps to see how people have them set up.

 

Melev's Reef Site

More than you wanted to know about building and designing sumps. I used what I learned from here (and a few other places) to design and build my sump.

 

You need an overflow box to make a sump as jtreef said. I'm not sure its worth it to make a 10g sump. The return filter alone would take up a fair amount of space leaving little space for macroalgae. You might look into a larger rubbermaid tub 15-20g for a sump. As far as lighting you would want a small PC fixture with 18-24 watts. I use a 24w PC on my 30g refugium.