Dumb sump noob question

[Seedy J]

I'm going to be setting up a 135g tank soon and was thinking of making a sump out of a 40g breeder. My current main tank is a 55g with a HOB, canister filter, and circulation pump. The filters have intakes near the substrate, and the circulation pump creates a current that blows most of the fish poop into the intakes.

The 135g is tempered glass so I'll have to use a HOB overflow box. I'm guessing that even with circulation, most of the fish poop won't make its way up there or get sucked into the sump. In this kind of setup, how does fish waste get filtered out of the tank? Do you just have to vacuum it out or use another type of filtration, or does the overflow do a better job of it than I'm imagining?

 

[duanes]

The best way is to vacuum it out so it doesn't have a chance to break down in nitrate.
In large tanks if current is angled correctly for the decor, most waste (for me anyway) would end up in one spot, a pocket. So very quick and easy to vac out every other day, before it has a chance to gunk up the media in the sump.
Filters are only as good for the tank, as to how often they are cleaned.
Gunk in a filter is not out of the tank, in many cases its like sweeping dog dung under a rug, unseen, but creating a host of unseen chemical problems.

 

[markstrimaran]

I have a 2" permanent air lift that dumps over the weir. In conjunction with flow that pushes everything towards it.

 

[DN328]

I think depending on if you have substrate and the type of substrate the level of waste making it to the overflow varies. In addition, the water flow from circulation nozzle or return nozzle will affect as well. For my set-up, I will do a manual vacuum once a month to help reduce the waste underneath the black river rock substrate I use.

 

[esoxlucius]

There's two ends of the scale for this and most of us are somewhere inbetween:

1. Bare tanks with excellent circulation and bottom skimming filtration equals super clean tanks and never any need to vacuum.

2. Planted tanks with thick substrate, lots of decor and poor circulation, and more importantly are only surface skimming, equals once a week vacuuming (sometimes more).

Minimalistic tanks are not for everyone (myself included if truth be told but i'm more interested in trying to keep the water pristine than I am in how my tanks look).

Your situation, especially with surface skimming means that I don't think you'll get away with not vacuuming. Even if you had some powerheads to churn everything up only some of your gunk would surface skim out, the rest would rest somewhere or just sit in the water column looking unsightly.

 

[Seedy J]

I have a 2" permanent air lift that dumps over the weir. In conjunction with flow that pushes everything towards it.

This sounds interesting but I'm having trouble picturing it.. markstrimaran do you have a pic?

Sounds like I'll be doing some vacuuming no matter what. No big deal, especially if I can use current to get all the waste to accumulate in one spot. It'll probably be a sparsely decorated tank with sand substrate.. I've got silver dollars so no real plants. Thanks for the replies!

 

[markstrimaran]

It's on the far left bottom tank, with a corner overflow.

I use a similar method on the top tank. Tempered tank, over flow is created with a submersible pump, behind the red light baffle, with a small hole at the bottom.

The sump is overhead, with a rear , bottom full length PVC pipe spray bar.

The PVC pipe on the right is return also.