To sump or not to sump

Sure, glad to help and share my experience. I was so dead set against a sump since I started my tank. I was very worried of a flood, problems, etc.

To help answer your question:

1) depending on what type of overflow system/box you get with your tank, you normally have a box that has teeth on the top that feeds the surface water down into a box. It will fill the box and then the water comes down via a drain pipe into the first sump chamber. You'll see a filter sock on the left, that will catch any debris/junk. It then travels to my skimmer and then to through a sponge into my return section (far right). At that point the water is returned via the pump up and out to an outflow line into the main tank again.

2) if you have or get a drilled tank it will have holes in the bottom of the overflow where you'll have one for the drain pipe feeding water into the sump and the other for the pipe for returning the water back into the tank.

A few things I can say about plumbing a sump:

- have someone knowledgeable do your plumbing if you can, someone at a local LFS that knows their stuff. I was not good with things of that nature so my LFS guy came out and plumbed it all for me. If you're good with plumbing/etc you should be ok.

- make sure that your sump won't overflow with the excess water from your overflow box in case of a power outage. My sump is roughly 20g, I have probably about 12g always in it while it's running. When the power goes out, my overflow box drains into the sump about another 3g or so, and there's plenty of room left in my sump so there is no worry of overflowing it.

- when choosing a return pump, going bigger isn't always bad, you can put a valve on the return line so you can dial back and find your sweet spot when you figure out how fast your overflow drains into your sump.

I'm not a sump expert by any means but hope some of this helps, I'm still learning but am so happy I went with a drilled tank and got the sump.

FYI on my 55g non-drilled I ran a Deltec MCE600 hob skimmer, 2 Koralia Evolution pumps (750gph), 300w heater. That was all the equipment I used to sustain the tank, I also dosed bi-weekly ALK/CA/MG & had some Phosphate remover/Carbon media in my media compartment on my skimmer. Live rock was a huge factor in sustaining that tank, I had about 75lbs of nice rock that kept my bio filtration nice and stable.

 

I can tell you that I have about 2300 gph of flow in my display area, not including a Vortech MP10 of lagoon mode. 400 gph flow is absolutely nothing except for the smallest tanks. Just consider that I have a plan to add a seperate 2 gallon betta tank to use as a SPS frag tank, and I'm shooting for about 200 gph of flow through there.

You wont neccesarily be just as successful either. A skimmer is a very different kind of filter than a biowheel.

Personally, the refugium has been my tank's savior. I have a sump with only a fuge, and its so important to my tank that I could not do what I do without it.

 

JTR, It should be just slightly over your Overflows max flow. At a minimum of 4ft of head (vertical push the pump has to make) you lose some of your GPH rating from the return pump. I used a MAG 7 (700gph) on my 300gph overflow but was a little too much. It was controlled by adding a recirc/return line directly off of the discharge side of the pump and dumped back into the sump to control the rate of return GPH. I strongly recommend making a recirc/dump line on any return setup just in case.

Right now a MAG5 (500gph) is 99% on target with matching my 300GPH overflow. You have to add your Head in feet plus every elbow. All of these reduce your total return GPH back to the tank by a little. There are online calculators for this.

 

I have a 30 gal set up with a sump, and I used a 3/4" DIY PVC overflow (google it, lots of plans), and I'm very happy with how it has been working. It worked at about 40 g/h and right now it is handling around 120, I think, guesstimate. A few tweaks and it is as quiet as ever. The sump is great, skimmer and whatnot down there, all I have in the tank is the return tubes and the overflow box on the input tube.

I'm converting my 55 gal and planning on having 3 overflow tubes hidden inside an overflow box.

Sumps with fuge's are great. You can also keep critters down there that you don't want in your tank. You can do without, but you will sure miss out on a lot of fun.

Rick

 

Where did you get your overflow system/box? I see that people build theres but is there something you can buy online? I know there are wet/dry filters with bio balls and stuff in there, but those seem expensive to get just to not use the bio balls. Just want your opinion, thanks.

 

sump all the way