HMF-style mechanical filtration in sump?

Now that things are starting to progress with my tank build (stand should be here in two weeks) I'd better get serious about designing the filtration for it!
The tank is going to house many large messy plecs (3 L190, 3 L14, 2 L128, L81 for a start!), so the filter system needs to not only have effective mechanical filtration that can deal with a large volume of waste, it needs to be easy to clean and to be able to go a reasonable length of time (7 days at least) without clogging. I've seen how much mess the royals make now and they're only ~4" each, there's going to be a lot of sawdust by the time they're pushing 12"+!! With the sump on my previous 1400L set up I used filter socks, I was very impressed with how well they cleared the water but found they clogged in about 3 days, even when suspended half way out of the water. I used to run a "settling chamber" before the sump on my 800L set up [pic below] and found it worked very well for catching larger waste (like Panaque crap) and would really like to incorporate one this time around. The trouble is it makes it more difficult to use the filter socks given that I have limited height to work with. I'm toying with the notion of using several sheets of Poret foam after the settling chamber for a "hamburgmatten" style filter to catch the finer debris before getting to the pond matrix that will provide the biological media.



Basically the water would flow into the settling chamber, then over a baffle and through the foam (10ppi, 20ppi, and maybe 30ppi?) then over the bio media and heaters before returning to the tank. The sump will be ~50cm wide and probably 50-60cm high, with the water level around 30cm in the last compartment so there will be a large area of foam for the water to pass through, and as it clogs the water level on the left side will just increase further up the foam.
I've never used the foam before, so I'm unsure just how much water a sheet like that will flow. I'm planning on having ~2000gph turn over, is it even feasible to have this sort of volume of water flowing through the foam like this? Any idea how it will work and how long it might last before reducing the water flow?

Here's a pic of the settling chamber on my 800L set up. I could always use two separate tanks like this and have the drains running into filter socks, but I'd rather just have it incorporated all into one tank.

Going with as Laguna MaxFlo 2900, with around 3' of head it will probably be doing close to 2500g (according to their table, I'm guessing a little less) so it could be 8-9000LPH. I was thinking of having a sheet of the 10ppi foam, then 20ppi then 30ppi, hopefully that will keep the water fairly clear?

I've been thinking about it at work today, do you think it would be better to have a baffle like this after the media so that most of the sheet is completely submerged, rather than letting the water level on the left of the sheets increase as they clog up?

Here's a more detailed picture of what I'm planning, all feedback appreciated! If I can manage to get hold of some I'll probably grow Pothos in the settling chamber part, which will help collect debris in the roots too I imagine. I'm not concerned about the amount of bio, but will the Poret like that be enough mechanical to keep the water clear? Will the 50x50 sheets be able to handle the flow of water I'm planning?



Sump will be 48cm wide (internal) and 60cm high. Water flows in from the tank, through the settling chamber (about 75cm long) and over a 48cm high baffle into the 50x50cm sheets of Poret. I was thinking of using two 5cm sheets of 10ppi together to make a 10cm thick block that should catch most of the remaining physical waste, then two 5cm sheets of 20ppi with a small gap between them to remove any remaining fine waste and provide some bio filtration. The water flows under next baffle which will be 52cm high, then over the next one at 40cm high (which will allow the water level in the compartment with the foam to rise as it slowly clogs to create a bit of pressure to help move the water through the foam). Seems how I have about 40L of bioballs and 30kg of ceramic noodles left over from my last set up I'm going to make a drip tray and a ~40L compartment for additional bio media, noodles, bioballs, matrix, whatever. From there the water flows over the heaters before being returned to the tank. Total length of the sump will be about 200cm.

Looks like an interesting read, will check it out thoroughly tonight.

Filter socks. Hmm. I used two 100micron socks on my last set up and was changing them every three days, and that is something I really want to avoid this time round. I had considered using four 720x190mm 100micron socks instead of two 400x190mm to try prolong the time between cleans, but the settling chamber on my old 800L tank worked so well at catching the Panaque crap I really want to incorporate in this sump, which makes it hard to use the filter socks. Ideally I'd like to be able to leave the sump untouched for at least a week, if not longer.

I don't want to put anything (except maybe pothos) in the first compartment as I want it to be easy to siphon the muck out the bottom every week or two. The settling chamber on my 800L tank would collect about 10mm of sawdust and crud on the bottom in a week, and that was with only one 5-6" Panaque. This tank will have 3-4 of them and I'm counting on them getting a lot bigger than that so having some sort of easy to clean pre-filter before the sponges/socks/whatever is going to be a must-have.

Have you got any pics of your set up Miguel?

Cool, Thanks!