Newbie at this sump thing. Need help with design.
- Thread starter lunker65
- Start date
I like pads over socks. Mostly because its an inexpensive locally available bulk material. Plus you can just toss them if you dont want to rinse them.
Mechanical filtration is key in a large sump system. Its often overlooked. If done right it makes maintenance and tank health much better and easier.
Oversized plumbing on drains is always good. Not only can it handle more flow, but if your utilizing an open channel drain such as a durso pipe it allows air to coexist more peacefully with water in the plumbing. Sorry for my lack of scientific terminology there lol.
Redundancy is key imo. My approach is to design the plumbing to be able to handle 2-3x the capacity I intend to run. Then I Simulate catastrophic failures. Block most of the overflow teeth, plug 1 or 2 drains. Do whatever you can to make it backup and spill on the floor. If you absolutely cannot get water on the floor while deliberately trying to... then your good. The system is bullet proof.
I went a little crazy and bought a brand new 90g reef ready and drilled a 3rd hole.
I liked the herbie method but I wanted more peace of mind. A low flow drain between the 2 stand pipes (siphon/emergency) helps buffer any changes in water level or flow rate, makes adjusting the siphon much easier, guards against siphon failure in a power outage, and makes sure the emergency stays dry all of the time. This method is commonly reffered to as the beananimal overflow after its creator who posts on reefcentral.
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Mechanical filtration is key in a large sump system. Its often overlooked. If done right it makes maintenance and tank health much better and easier.
Oversized plumbing on drains is always good. Not only can it handle more flow, but if your utilizing an open channel drain such as a durso pipe it allows air to coexist more peacefully with water in the plumbing. Sorry for my lack of scientific terminology there lol.
Redundancy is key imo. My approach is to design the plumbing to be able to handle 2-3x the capacity I intend to run. Then I Simulate catastrophic failures. Block most of the overflow teeth, plug 1 or 2 drains. Do whatever you can to make it backup and spill on the floor. If you absolutely cannot get water on the floor while deliberately trying to... then your good. The system is bullet proof.
I went a little crazy and bought a brand new 90g reef ready and drilled a 3rd hole.
I liked the herbie method but I wanted more peace of mind. A low flow drain between the 2 stand pipes (siphon/emergency) helps buffer any changes in water level or flow rate, makes adjusting the siphon much easier, guards against siphon failure in a power outage, and makes sure the emergency stays dry all of the time. This method is commonly reffered to as the beananimal overflow after its creator who posts on reefcentral.
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I have a thread I started about my 90g/40b set up.
Heres some pics of plumbing and my trickle tower.
View attachment 1047127
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Heres some pics of plumbing and my trickle tower.
View attachment 1047127
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I want that bullet proof system. The thing that has been pushing me away from sumps for this long is the fact that they can overflow and cause a huge mess. It looks like the bean animal is similar it just has a primary and emergency and an apocalypse pipes. Again I like the idea of no possible way it can overflow. I need that below in the sump too. I also was leaning tward the pads but just wanted to see what people thought about socks. Maybe using them together would be good. Use the pads as the first one then the bags to polish the water before going into the bio matrix. What are some thoughts on the eheim pumps. I'm going twards the 1260. I think the 1262 may be a little to much.
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I have no experience with eheim pumps.
When in doubt go larger. You can always tee off and return some flow back into the sump if need be. Its much better to have too much than not enough. Its hard to know exactly what #'s you'll be pushing at head height with elbows, pipe diameter, etc. There are calculators you can use, but thats just a rough idea.
I found that my mag 9.5 with 1.5" plumbing and being tee'd to both corners of a 4ft tank - would actually take a few minutes to "prime" or purge all of the air from the return plumbing and reach its normal full flow rate.
Something to keep in mind when testing your system.
:edit:
My first sump system I ran was a 40 tall w/ a 10g sump. I had just 1 drain on a 1.25" bulkhead and a 400gph return pump. It ran close to 2 years with no issues whatsoever. It was in my basement. There were times I was really busy with life and could only check on it a couple times a week to feed and do maintenance.
So I understand your paranoia with sump systems, however failure is rather uncommon. Even a poorly thought out drilled system has more fail safes by design than a typical diy pvc siphon overflow.
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When in doubt go larger. You can always tee off and return some flow back into the sump if need be. Its much better to have too much than not enough. Its hard to know exactly what #'s you'll be pushing at head height with elbows, pipe diameter, etc. There are calculators you can use, but thats just a rough idea.
I found that my mag 9.5 with 1.5" plumbing and being tee'd to both corners of a 4ft tank - would actually take a few minutes to "prime" or purge all of the air from the return plumbing and reach its normal full flow rate.
Something to keep in mind when testing your system.
:edit:
My first sump system I ran was a 40 tall w/ a 10g sump. I had just 1 drain on a 1.25" bulkhead and a 400gph return pump. It ran close to 2 years with no issues whatsoever. It was in my basement. There were times I was really busy with life and could only check on it a couple times a week to feed and do maintenance.
So I understand your paranoia with sump systems, however failure is rather uncommon. Even a poorly thought out drilled system has more fail safes by design than a typical diy pvc siphon overflow.
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Socks are amazing. I will never use pads and don't understand how people can use them without overflowing or clogging fully almost every day. Surface area of a large sock is far more than a pad. Key to not overflowing your sump is to have a large enough sump to handle the volume of water that drains from the main tank. Return pipes need to be above water splashing in or right at water surface so they don't back flow. The KISS principal works best for sumps. I don't like all the pull out drawer stuff and what as its items that will get dirty and can cause water to go all over and be very loud.
Socks, bio media of choice and then pump easy as that. If you use a sinking media(pond matrix) you don't even need the dividers like I have because it won't float into the filter.
This is a very simple easy to maintain bullet proof system.
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Socks, bio media of choice and then pump easy as that. If you use a sinking media(pond matrix) you don't even need the dividers like I have because it won't float into the filter.
This is a very simple easy to maintain bullet proof system.
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I agree with keeping it simple. Filtration is a simple process so why complicate it. The head height will be about 4 feet or so. I am gonna keep the piping as liniar as possible to reduce that back pressure. I am planning on using a 30 gal tank as my sump for this 55 gallon project tank. Probley twice what I really need but IMO you can't have too much filtration. I had also looked at that mag 9.5. It is a little more economical but how quiet is it. That is my main concern. it will be in the bedroom. I can handle noise but the wife not so much. As for the socks, is there a way to clean them out? I have seen 100 and 200 micron socks, do they make finer than the 100?
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I just finished up a big sump/PVC project, and my take on it is this. a 55 gallon tank is small to be drilling, running a sump, etc. that said, you can certainly make a sump "bulletproof". You CAN make it quiet, too. But....in the bedroom while you're trying to sleep kinda quiet? On your first attempt at it? With a TINY tank? That's a bridge too far. If you're concerned about how quiet the pump will be (I was), then go with a submersible pump that sits underwater inside the sump--but you'll need a bigger sump for that.
Socks are EASY to clean--hose, washing machine. Or you can just buy a bunch and throw em away. Easier to clean socks than canisters, or foam pads. Socks are the way to go if your sump is big enough. Anohter thing to consider with a sump/small tank. Is the stand gonna be big enough to hide all this pipe between the sump and tank? PVC's hard enough to run without doing it in a tight space. You might price out "flex pvc". Or, you're running small enough lines maybe you could use PEX?
Socks are EASY to clean--hose, washing machine. Or you can just buy a bunch and throw em away. Easier to clean socks than canisters, or foam pads. Socks are the way to go if your sump is big enough. Anohter thing to consider with a sump/small tank. Is the stand gonna be big enough to hide all this pipe between the sump and tank? PVC's hard enough to run without doing it in a tight space. You might price out "flex pvc". Or, you're running small enough lines maybe you could use PEX?
Its quiet but there are quieter pumps. It has a little vibration and a slight hum. Inside the cabinet I cannot hear it. They've got to be set up correctly to be quiet.
I had to isolate where the plumbing and pump contact the stand or tanks with silicone pads.
They also require sometimes prohibitively large 1.5" plumbing to get the advertised flow curves.
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