Burko;3843720; said:
I have two 55 gallon sumps on my 450. Here's the trick.
1) The sumps have to be connected. I have a 1" line connecting both my sumps at the lowest level, basically the connection points are below the water level.
2) If using a smaller line like I did to connect your sumps then you need to set up your sumps independent of each other. What I mean is, each sump needs to have it's own return pump and it's own drain. My tank has two separate overflows each overflow drains to it's own sump. Each sump has the exact same pump on it to return water to the tank. If you do this you basically have two separate systems and the plumbing connecting the sumps just keeps everything equal, there's not much flow between the sumps. If you put all the pumps in one sump then your going to need a very large pipe connecting the two sumps, ya with me?
3) Why use two sumps? I did it because I had two free 55 gallon tanks and everything fit under my 450. Larger is better. The more water you have in your system the better. This is easy if you have two separate overflows. The trick is keeping the level of water in the sumps the same height. If one sump starts filling more than the other then your going to have one sump run dry and one will over flow. If this happens you need a larger pipe between the sumps or it may be easier to just run another pipe between the sumps.
I use Quiet One submersible pumps. I bought three of the exact same kind just incase one failed. This is critical because if one of your pumps fails your whole system is down. You can't run one pump with out the other. (unless you have a very large pipe between your sumps) Your chances of a total system failure effectively doubles because you loose either one of your pumps your whole system is down. Big draw back of this system.
