Overflow Rating Question

[swk]

It's a decision regarding turnover vs. contact time. You can send the water over the bacteria a million times and have it not remove all the impurities, because it never has enough time to do it's thing. Or, you can send it over the bacteria more slowly, allowing plenty of time for the bacteria to do it's thing. For a SUMP, I tend to fall on the side of turning volume over more slowly, as I think the filter performs better this way, biologically speaking. I tend to use powerheads to pick up the slack and provide more flow and/or canisters to help improve mechanical filtration.

For example in my HEAVILY stocked 180 I have:

sump w/12 mag 12. After head loss is +/- 800 gph about 4.5x per hour
eheim 2262 with media we will call it 600 gph about 3.5
vortech mp40w powerhead 500-3000gph

Plenty of flow, and flow through media. I just prefer not to ram it all through a sump. JMO

 

[landmineyouth]

It's a decision regarding turnover vs. contact time. You can send the water over the bacteria a million times and have it not remove all the impurities, because it never has enough time to do it's thing. Or, you can send it over the bacteria more slowly, allowing plenty of time for the bacteria to do it's thing. For a SUMP, I tend to fall on the side of turning volume over more slowly, as I think the filter performs better this way, biologically speaking. I tend to use powerheads to pick up the slack and provide more flow and/or canisters to help improve mechanical filtration.

For example in my HEAVILY stocked 180 I have:

sump w/12 mag 12. After head loss is +/- 800 gph about 4.5x per hour
eheim 2262 with media we will call it 600 gph about 3.5
vortech mp40w powerhead 500-3000gph

Plenty of flow, and flow through media. I just prefer not to ram it all through a sump. JMO

That makes sense and I take this advice with much thought... Perhaps I will go with two Mag 9.5's and make up for flow in other regards with some air-circulators inside the tank itself or a canister filter...