Changing in filration, Critisim needed.

[Lil_Stinker]

great but have you ever thought of what bacteria need? they need oxygen and food. with your design of 'lower flow rate' you will have a large concentration of bacteria at one end and no bacteria on the other. which will result in no oxygen going back to your fish what you should do if you are going to use this system is incorparate a degassing chamber whih is just a part of the sump where you inject air (not oxygen) vary vary roughly so as to degass all the co2 and reintroduce oxygen at a 95-100% saturation level. this may also allow more bacteria to grow if the oxygen can go through to the tank and through the filter without all of it being used up. also you need this degassing chamber just before your return.

One more bubble tube in the last chamber, perhaps.

 

[tscharf]

Yes, this has been done many times

k jw

 

[nfored]

great but have you ever thought of what bacteria need? they need oxygen and food. with your design of 'lower flow rate' you will have a large concentration of bacteria at one end and no bacteria on the other. which will result in no oxygen going back to your fish what you should do if you are going to use this system is incorparate a degassing chamber whih is just a part of the sump where you inject air (not oxygen) vary vary roughly so as to degass all the co2 and reintroduce oxygen at a 95-100% saturation level. this may also allow more bacteria to grow if the oxygen can go through to the tank and through the filter without all of it being used up. also you need this degassing chamber just before your return.

You're saying you don't think that the air bubbler in each chamber is enough? I could run an air line directly into to the return line, this will create a lot of bubbles coming out of the outputs and increase agitation. I am interested in hearing about the lack of O2 and what peoples thoughts are, on the problem and possible solution. Another goal here is a silent operation, it is my desire for the only noise to be the pump itself.

One other thought, is that if you are correct in your statement that some of the bio media will end up with zero O2, then that would form a type of bacteria that eats Nitrate. I personally don't think all the O2 will be used up, not only will there be 1 bubble bar in each chamber the flow is not slow enough to consume all O2. When you look at DeNitrate coils the work only if the water moves slow enough, you move to fast and it doesn't work. those coils work at much less then 100GPH.

 

[nfored]

this thread got me to thinking, could you make a two story sump? it would look almost exactly like that but 2 of them, one stacked on the other. instead of the pumps being in the end chamber on the top level there would simply be a whole in the bottom where the water would drop down to the second level. would that work?

I had though of this setup also, but for the size of tank this is going on, that might be a little over kill. Where I could see that being a benefit is if you run multiple tanks and you need the extra storage. honestly a 55 gallon or even a 40 gallon provides enough space for mech and bio media to run 1000's of gallons of water through. The only issue is you have to have more room to hold the water, during power failures.

Just 2 inches of water in a 220 gallon tank is close to 18 gallons of water, 2 inches is a safe starting place for how far the water will drop when the system is off. Unless of course you have massively over sized drain pipes in which case you may have almost no drop in water level.

 

[yogurt_21]

The theory is there and has been addressed before, there are lots of sump systems out there that have several media chambers and run exactly the same way. But there is still the question of which one is more efficient, some people will say that contact time is more important than speed of flow, personally I'm a big fan of the idea that small tanks need higher turn over rates than large ones... but all of this is negated by the fact that a well established tank doesn't need any turn over at all ( I have several tanks that run filter less due to the amount of bacteria within the tank itself). Most tanks are not in desperate need of their filters for anything more than breaking the water surface for gas exchange (this is not to say all tanks of course just the ones that are well established)

This has been a hot debate for many many years, old schoolers will be more in favor of the low-slow turn over while a lot of youngins will follow the More is better side of the debate.

There's a lfs that runs all of it's tanks with little more than sponge filters and air stones. It's jesse's aquariums in phoenix. All the fish are healthy and the tanks are well established.


I tend to follow the flow by design method myself. For me it's the amount of media and contact time that are all that really matters. So one tank has lower flow and more media, while the other has more flow and less media.

though yes by design the more water and surface area in the tank, the less filtration needed for the same bio load. trouble is the larger tanks we get, the larger fish we keep. thus increasing the bio load. Though I'm less likely to go out and grab anew pump than i am to grab a larger sump and media chamber. cost effectiveness also plays a factor not to mention spitting water out at 15x turnover isn't going to save you if your tank is overstocked. lol

 

[Starting up]

the reasn for the vertical compartments is so the water has to pass throught the bio media and cannot bypass it. In your design if the water is higher then the bio media then it has the chance to bypass your bio media. You can also get dead spots in your bio media.

good luck and give it a try

 

[nfored]

So I have this up and running, its working freaking awesome but one annoyance. One of the key designs was a wet sump basicly the water enters the sump underwater and is returned to the tank underwater. The goal was zero noise, the problem is since the drains in the tank are not 100% under water.

There is no noise of air being sucked in, no draining noise, and not splashing. The Problem is air bubbles they the rush out by the thousands out of the drain into the sump. So I have either the sound of all the bubbles agitating the water, or I put the return close to the surface and get splashing. Any Ideas? I will get pics tomorrow

 

[nfored]

the reasn for the vertical compartments is so the water has to pass throught the bio media and cannot bypass it. In your design if the water is higher then the bio media then it has the chance to bypass your bio media. You can also get dead spots in your bio media.

good luck and give it a try

That is where osmossis takes place, and since the water is pumped out from the bottom of the sump and not the top, there is high flow rate at the bottom and the top draws down to the bottom. new water is always passed trough all the media just like in a normal sump, the only diff is that not all water is passed through. The only way I can see spots where no water gets is if the water hit the media and flowed over top of it. However you can tell thats not happening becuase there would be surface agitation like if you pointed a power head up at an angle.