My DIY Sump Design

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s14swap240sx

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 24, 2011
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My diy sump, is a 55g tank. This will be filtering my 125g all male peacock hap tank. My tank is a reef ready dual overflow 125. Outflow is dual 1inch, about 1200gph. Return is 3/4inch pipe. I have two eheim canisters, was considering running one at least with the sump, but it seems like the sump it self should be able to handle the whole tank.

Here is my drawing, after some pointers by the guys at cichlid forums.

photo-43.jpg


Soo the filter starts with 2, 4inch filter socks, flowing over a refugium of 3 hydro sponges to quickly establish new tanks.

at this point the water will trickle over about 6, possibly 7.5 gallons of dry bioballs. and then under and over into a chamber for the pump..

heaters will be maintained in either the wet/dry section or first sock section.. please give me some advice and let me know what you guys think.

thank you
 
It looks pretty good to me. The only issue I can see is that the lower part of the hydro sponge chamber won't be getting much flow. It shouldn't be a major issue because the hydro sponges should mix up the water in that chamber.

Also, have you considered scrubbies? They offer significantly more area than bio-balls.
 
no i have not considered them, but on the plus i have not purchased any media yet. just trying to get the initial design done and outa the way
 
I would combine the first and second chamber into one and use only a single pane of glass. You dont really need the baffles in freshwater. You can just put your sponge filter in the first chamber. There should be plenty of room. The added space can be used for more bioballs or a larger return section.

If you want to use the separate section for the sponge filter, you have the room in the 55 so its not a big deal but i would still eliminate the baffles and use a single pane of glass between the first and second sections.
 
Here we go:

photo-44.jpg


Picked up the 55g from my friend today. ordering glass tmrw.. gonna order it at 11 15/16ths or should i do 11 7/8 inch? the width is exactly 12.. total with is 12.5 the thickness of the glass is 1/4inch

photo-45.jpg
 
I think i did 11 15/16ths on mine. That should be ok. You may want to lengthen the height of the right pane of glass on the bio balls section. I'm not sure on that one but you may want a fudge factor to keep a higher flow from spilling over the right side of the sump. You can adjust the size of the drip holes instead but that gives you the option to tune the flow a bit more.
 
ok i will keep that in mind, any need to support that pane from underneath? i mean how strong is silicone really? the last thing i would want is the pane to fall down and crack the bottom of the sump. i was thinking putting pvc there to not only support it but also act as a ledge when i place the eggcrate down. hmm
 
Silicone is pretty strong, but it doesn't hurt to overengineer a little. Nothing sucks more than having to repair something.

You might also want to try sketchup: http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/index.html
It really helped me visualise my sump (and a number of other components). Don't bother buying the pro version - the free one is more than adequate.
 
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