Nope everything was perfect. I will toss them back on and see how it goes
Sump thoughts
- Thread starter ADawson23
- Start date
Nope everything was perfect. I will toss them back on and see how it goes
When I set up my first sump I had my first part set up pretty much the same as yours. Water in, and first port of call for filtering were a set of vertically placed sponges, just like yours.
Those first couple of layers of sponges will get clogged up quickly, depending how messy your inhabitants are. And trust me, when you come to take them out to clean them the crud will get released all over, it can't be helped, and then you'll have to syphon all that crud from the bottom of that compartment.
I very quickly got tired of doing that. You either need a pre filter (as in socks) to go before your vertically placed sponges, or reconfigure it.
I have a simple bucket which houses horizontally placed sponges with filter floss on top. At maintanance time I just lift the lid and replace the filter floss, easy as that. Once in a while I'll lift the whole bucket out and take it to the kitchen sink to rinse all the sponges too.
Ease of maintanance should be at the front of your mind when doing a sump.
Those first couple of layers of sponges will get clogged up quickly, depending how messy your inhabitants are. And trust me, when you come to take them out to clean them the crud will get released all over, it can't be helped, and then you'll have to syphon all that crud from the bottom of that compartment.
I very quickly got tired of doing that. You either need a pre filter (as in socks) to go before your vertically placed sponges, or reconfigure it.
I have a simple bucket which houses horizontally placed sponges with filter floss on top. At maintanance time I just lift the lid and replace the filter floss, easy as that. Once in a while I'll lift the whole bucket out and take it to the kitchen sink to rinse all the sponges too.
Ease of maintanance should be at the front of your mind when doing a sump.
Great advice. I'm in the process of building a sump and I like this idea.
When I used socks, I had 3 for each effluent line to the sump.
While one was filtering, one was soaking in bleach, and one sitting in water with a bloop of sodium-thiosulphate to remove the excess bleach (took about 3 days to clog the one filtering in my tanks).
I also agree they could help biomedia by filtering out "gunk" that might smother and choke out the BB (BB are predominantly aerobic).
But as long as there is enough biomedia to do the job, an excess can be overkill, because the beneficial bacteria populations are determined by the ammonia put out by the fish, not by the volume of media.
Of course if a tank is overstocked, that tank may need that overkill.
But you may only need half, or even a third the amount to do the job. Your ammonia test will tell you.
For tanks that can't be planted, I find planting a good portion of a sump (refugium) can be more beneficial.
I also add critters such as shrimp to the refugium to help breakdown "gunk" into more useable plant food, much like salt water hobbyists do for corals.
In my 125 gal sump only about 10" of the end of the 6 ft tank, are filled with biomedia, and that does the job.
Of course when I remove the Porrett foam to hose it down, my tank gets cloudy of about 24 hours, but easily clears.
The rest of the sump (maybe 5 ft) is heavily planted, helping to use up nitrate and other excess nutrients normal media doesn't neutralize.
In tanks I had (way back when) with carnivores that were heavily fed with oily protein based foods (shrimp, mollusks, fish meat), I found protein skimmers were some of the best additions to sump. (and yes they were freshwater).
Below a video of a DIY fractionation unit on a pond. I appreciated the way it removed "gunk" before it got lodged in the filter media.
I also used these type units on indoor tanks.
The bag of dark water is the waste the fractionator, took out of the tank.
I also did tests in the lab to determine density of waste compared to tank water.
Fractionator waste was desiccated and weighed (average 8-10 times heavier than straight tank water.
While one was filtering, one was soaking in bleach, and one sitting in water with a bloop of sodium-thiosulphate to remove the excess bleach (took about 3 days to clog the one filtering in my tanks).
I also agree they could help biomedia by filtering out "gunk" that might smother and choke out the BB (BB are predominantly aerobic).
But as long as there is enough biomedia to do the job, an excess can be overkill, because the beneficial bacteria populations are determined by the ammonia put out by the fish, not by the volume of media.
Of course if a tank is overstocked, that tank may need that overkill.
But you may only need half, or even a third the amount to do the job. Your ammonia test will tell you.
For tanks that can't be planted, I find planting a good portion of a sump (refugium) can be more beneficial.
I also add critters such as shrimp to the refugium to help breakdown "gunk" into more useable plant food, much like salt water hobbyists do for corals.
In my 125 gal sump only about 10" of the end of the 6 ft tank, are filled with biomedia, and that does the job.
Of course when I remove the Porrett foam to hose it down, my tank gets cloudy of about 24 hours, but easily clears.
The rest of the sump (maybe 5 ft) is heavily planted, helping to use up nitrate and other excess nutrients normal media doesn't neutralize.
In tanks I had (way back when) with carnivores that were heavily fed with oily protein based foods (shrimp, mollusks, fish meat), I found protein skimmers were some of the best additions to sump. (and yes they were freshwater).
Below a video of a DIY fractionation unit on a pond. I appreciated the way it removed "gunk" before it got lodged in the filter media.
The bag of dark water is the waste the fractionator, took out of the tank.
I also did tests in the lab to determine density of waste compared to tank water.
Fractionator waste was desiccated and weighed (average 8-10 times heavier than straight tank water.
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