Sump Design Advice

[wesb2013]

I'm setting up a 225g native tank and am ready to start building the sump tank. This is my first sump so I'd appreciate if ya'll can give e some feedback on the design.


Due to space restrictions (AKA poor planning when building the stand) I will be drilling a 75g tank and a 20g tank, and connecting them via pvc. This will give me more space for a refugium, and more water volume in the system.

I'm mainly concerned about the placement of the refugium. Will the plants (likely jungle val / water sprite) in the refugium possibly block the pvc pipe and cause an overflow? Is it ok to have refugium debris end up in the biomedia chamber?

 

[Trouser Bark]

Ffirst sumps are overly complex and last sumps are a pile of BBQ rock in an open tank w/ a sock at the inlet.

I'd opt against K1 as I think it's an ineffective media compared to most anything else.. I'd also consider ditching the add'l 20g. I'd have no sand in the refugium, I'd have a sock or two at the inlet and I'd have a UV sterilizer between the return chamber and the tank. If you've been a can man for the last long time you may want to consider not buying a new pump for your return chamber and instead put whatever canister you'd been using previously at that point and fill it w/ pool balls to polish the return water.

 

[wesb2013]

Ffirst sumps are overly complex and last sumps are a pile of BBQ rock in an open tank w/ a sock at the inlet.

I'd opt against K1 as I think it's an ineffective media compared to most anything else.. I'd also consider ditching the add'l 20g. I'd have no sand in the refugium, I'd have a sock or two at the inlet and I'd have a UV sterilizer between the return chamber and the tank. If you've been a can man for the last long time you may want to consider not buying a new pump for your return chamber and instead put whatever canister you'd been using previously at that point and fill it w/ pool balls to polish the return water.

I don't have any canister filters, and quite frankly am not interested in them. I'm really looking for something that is highly effective at reducing ammonia and nitrates. Plus, I sometimes randomly leave my house for two weeks at a time so low maintenance is a high priority too. That's how I got to this design.

 

[tlindsey]

I'm setting up a 225g native tank and am ready to start building the sump tank. This is my first sump so I'd appreciate if ya'll can give e some feedback on the design.


Due to space restrictions (AKA poor planning when building the stand) I will be drilling a 75g tank and a 20g tank, and connecting them via pvc. This will give me more space for a refugium, and more water volume in the system.

I'm mainly concerned about the placement of the refugium. Will the plants (likely jungle val / water sprite) in the refugium possibly block the pvc pipe and cause an overflow? Is it ok to have refugium debris end up in the biomedia chamber?



View attachment 1538621

I'm stomped on the refugium placement. I personally would do the refugium in the chamber for the 2nd K1 media.
Tagging a more knowledgeable member duanes .

 

[wesb2013]

I'm stomped on the refugium placement. I personally would do the refugium in the chamber for the 2nd K1 media.
Tagging a more knowledgeable member duanes .

This is the first design I came up with. I ended up going back to the drawing board since I've heard more baffles = more problems. This is based on another design I saw on this forum.

(Baffle #3 is to hold in the substrate for refugium, If I use this design I'll probably make the baffle taller to reduce the flow in the refugium. Baffle #5may not be necessary, but I put it in there so that all the water from the refugium would be forced to go over the filter floss, and so that there would be more flow through the biomedia.)

 

[Trouser Bark]

Your comment about leaving randomly for two week periods is interesting as sumps typically need to have their rate of flow adjusted every few days as evaporation adjusts water level in the sump (but not the tank).

In my experience K1 as static media is ineffective. In my experience K1 as fluidized media is also suboptimal. I'm sure it must be xlnt in a specific application but I've never found it.

What will you have in the tank that might produce such a huge volume of NH3-4? Unless there's a heavy predator load or something else that's pretty unusual your bacteria media requirement will likely be much smaller than shown. Like, a single sock full of ceramic media in the water flow or similar.

duanes is the filter and water chem guru here. If he says anything that contradicts my view; take his.

 

[wesb2013]

Your comment about leaving randomly for two week periods is interesting as sumps typically need to have their rate of flow adjusted every few days as evaporation adjusts water level in the sump (but not the tank).

In my experience K1 as static media is ineffective. In my experience K1 as fluidized media is also suboptimal. I'm sure it must be xlnt in a specific application but I've never found it.

What will you have in the tank that might produce such a huge volume of NH3-4? Unless there's a heavy predator load or something else that's pretty unusual your bacteria media requirement will likely be much smaller than shown. Like, a single sock full of ceramic media in the water flow or similar.

duanes is the filter and water chem guru here. If he says anything that contradicts my view; take his.

Thanks for your reply.

Randomly leaving the house for two weeks may seem strange to some, but I'm 29, single, live alone, and work for myself. Thus, I can do whatever I want whenever I want. Sometimes I wake up Friday morning and decide I want to drive 8 hours to the mountains for a few days. Other times it's work related. Either way, I have someone who can do basic things like feed fish / change filter floss every few days.

The fish inside are going to be all native. Right now I have 1 bluegill (11") and three crappie (8-9" each). I used to have a bass and a small bullhead / catfish. I'll probably go catch one of those again, and maybe add a couple of more bluegill. A crawdad and a turtle would be really cool too at some point.

According to aquariumscience.org, fluidized k1 does the best job at reducing ammonia, followed by poret foam, pot scrubbers, and static K1. I was going to do poret foam / pot scrubbers until I found out how cheap k1 is when ordered in bulk. (It's roughly 60% of the cost of foam where I'm at) Source 1 Source 2.

 

[wesb2013]

Aquariumscience.org says that 5 sqft of biomedia is enough to oxidize the ammonia produced by 1 pound of fish. He recommends having 100 sqft, however, for the best water parameters and for crystal clear water. I probably don't need 100 sqft per pound of fish, but that's what I designed it for. I'm thinking that if I have less biomedia it will give me more space for the refugium, and give me a better shot at reducing nitrates.

 

[duanes]

To me, the most important part of a sump, is the planted refugium.
So in my 125 gal 6 ft sump, about 5 ft is dedicated to the planted section, and
about 1 ft is dedicated to biomedia, mechanical media and the pump.
I also find baffles to be a waste of time and effort.
The only semblance of a baffle for me is a Porret foam wall that acts as a barrier between the planted side and the pump/media side.
So that entire wall acts as mechanical media.
Photos below, of the Porret wall, were taken when it was set up about 3 years ago

The amount of biomedia is also compact, the 3 little bags above, and a porous lava rock block, west of the Porret Foam wall are the only biomedia, and consume all the ammonia and nitrite coming from the 180ngal tank it filters.
Below are the water parameters this sump combination produces.

The idea that one needs a large area for, and loads of bio-media is a bit exaggerated.
The biofilm area populated by ammonia, and nitrite consumers is determined by the ammonia and nitrite fish produce, not by volume of the media in it, or the medias surface space.
As you can see above the lack of ammonia and nitrite results show, the ammount of media used , and the plants in the refugium area take care of that.

The aquatic, and semi aquatic plants, in the 5 ft refugium take on that task with a vengeance, another test result below.

This sump/refugium has been set up in this fashion for at least 3 years.
I also use some terrestrial plants in the main tank, and sump.

And here is the average population of the tank it filters

The brown tint is from tannins I allow to seep in from surrounding vegetation.

 

[Trouser Bark]

Aquariumscience.org says that 5 sqft of biomedia is enough to oxidize the ammonia produced by 1 pound of fish. He recommends having 100 sqft, however, for the best water parameters and for crystal clear water. I probably don't need 100 sqft per pound of fish, but that's what I designed it for. I'm thinking that if I have less biomedia it will give me more space for the refugium, and give me a better shot at reducing nitrates.

Something about that reference seem a little unusual to you? Unused media is unused. It doesn't (and can't) do a better job than the correct amount of media. To say that 5sq' is adequate but twenty times that is better is akin to saying a two car family needs two cars but forty cars would be better. There's also a specific question you may want to ask and my preference would be not to appear to impugn your previous aquarium science reference. My suggestion would be that you came here looking for expert advise; perhaps it would be a good idea to ask those same experts what their media preference might be. Could be that K1 wins. You never know.