question about sumps

[Err]

whats the advaantage to sumps of fresh water

for the most part the same as a marine set up...more water in the system, easier acess to your filtration area for maintainance, hide equipment in it, a large volume of wet/dry filtration, or you can skip the sump full of scrubbies and use a small wet/dry area and use a sump full of plants to export nutrients. You could use an algae scrubber in there for the same effect as well..there are a bunch of diffrent things you can do with a nice large sump to drasticaly improve water quality and stability. Personaly I think filling a big ol' fat sump tank with nothing but scrubbies and a pump is effective but a big waste of sump space for nothing but a NO3 factory. Plants/algae are mother natures perfict filtration device, cultivate it, use it, grow it and you will LOL when people say you have to do WC's to get rid of NO3. Your resons for doing WC's at that point will be to just vac out debris and maintain the trace elements in the water that your fish need.

 

[sonycrr]

what is NO3?

thanks

 

[Err]

what is NO3?

thanks

NO3 = Nitrates If you take an O-chem class you will not only learn all about this compound but come to hate it lol. It really is an amazing molecule with tons of uses and has just as many if not more effects on living things. But for this simple sake of this hobby Nitrates = bad juju. NO3 is the result of nitrifying bacteria breaking down organic mater in your water via the nitrogen cycle. They are not immediately toxic to fish like NH4 (ammonia) or NO2 (Nitrite) but a high build up of NO3 in an aquarium is bad, they have been linked to diseases such as Hole in the head etc due to a weakened immune system and can stunt the growth of fish. The best ways to keep the NO3 levels in an aquarium down and ensure the health of your system (20ppm or less) are

1) frequent and regular water changes, cleaning of your filters (not CLEAN but just knock the crud out in old tank or dechlorinated water) , and vacing the waste from the tank.

2) Feed the NO3 to plants either in a sump or hydrophonicly, this approach is a bit more expensive to get set up but its low maintenance, grows awesome plants and will really stabilize the water in your system.

3) an algae scrubber, algae is a plant (see #2) but this is a bit cheaper and easier than option 2 esp if you have a sump on your tank.

4) a heavily planted tank will achieve the same results, in fact a well planted tank will need the aquarist to dose the tank with NO3 in order to feed the plants. So if your fish are plant friendly (not too many are) buy some good lights and start growing!

Hope this brief overview helped. If not just do some research online, there is a wealth of articles about this subject out there.

 

[Zander_The_RBP]

i agree with using plants for nitrate export what i would get is some lucky bamboo and other terrestrial plants that can grow with there roots submerged in the water with the rest of the plant out of water. these plants arn't limited to CO2 in the tank water but instead would take it from the air, but will still take nitrates out of the tank water through their roots and probably take it out much faster as well

 

[Err]

i agree with using plants for nitrate export what i would get is some lucky bamboo and other terrestrial plants that can grow with there roots submerged in the water with the rest of the plant out of water. these plants arn't limited to CO2 in the tank water but instead would take it from the air, but will still take nitrates out of the tank water through their roots and probably take it out much faster as well

Good point, I belive that is why floating plants are a favorite for FW refugiums. Unfortunately if you have jumpers, doing this to your main tank is a bit out of the question. This would also keep PH fluctuations due to CO2/O2 release/use of sumbersed plants from occuring or at a minimum.