just got a 180g bowfront that i will be using for frontosa & some other misc fish. the tank used to be a marine setup, so it has overflows & a sump. i have never used a sump before; i understand the concept pretty well, but most of my research involved marine setups.
the sump is acrylic, maybe 40gal. the overflows each route to two large filter socks. the water runs out the bottom of the filter socks and then transitions over to the return side, which would normally house the protein skimmer.
my plan is to bag several different media & drop it in the sump. the filter socks would still be used for mechanical filtration.
below the filter socks, i would add a bunch of seachem matrix. i like this for bio media; it does a good job w/ nitrate control.
in the return side of the sump, i plan to use a bag of charcoal, a bag of purigen & a bag of crushed coral (buffer).
instead of a protein skimmer, i will use a powerhead to run sump water through a uv sterilizer.
finally, i will have an air pump on battery backup; it will supply O2 to the bio filter if the power goes out.
thoughts / concerns? thanks for reading.
kev
the sump is acrylic, maybe 40gal. the overflows each route to two large filter socks. the water runs out the bottom of the filter socks and then transitions over to the return side, which would normally house the protein skimmer.
my plan is to bag several different media & drop it in the sump. the filter socks would still be used for mechanical filtration.
below the filter socks, i would add a bunch of seachem matrix. i like this for bio media; it does a good job w/ nitrate control.
in the return side of the sump, i plan to use a bag of charcoal, a bag of purigen & a bag of crushed coral (buffer).
instead of a protein skimmer, i will use a powerhead to run sump water through a uv sterilizer.
finally, i will have an air pump on battery backup; it will supply O2 to the bio filter if the power goes out.
thoughts / concerns? thanks for reading.
kev
