What kind of filtration is right for me?

[InfinityARch]

I'd loose the baffle between e&f and make them 1 chamber. Put your heaters in this chamber, if you have a controller for the elements put the thermometer in the d chamber. That way your heaters and what controls them are the farthest apart, better heating that way. So when the water is at the thermometer it's at its coldest.

Makes sense, but I'd have to get heaters or a controller with an automatic shutoff feature; the whole reason for isolating the return pump from everything else is to make it impossible for the tank to flood even if all the drains clog, and preventing the biomedia from running dry.

So maybe move the D-E baffle forwards 2", put the heating elements on that and have the temperature probe at the far end? I wanted a bubble trap there because the air pump for the biomedia chamber is going to introduce a lot of bubbles I imagine, but I suppose those aren't the problematic sort of micro bubbles to be worried about. That would add even more room for equipment in the chamber, but I'm already not entirely sure what I'm going to put in there.

Probably some stuff for nutrient export because the biomedia I have is already capable of removing more waste than my fish could possibly produce.

 

[twentyleagues]

I'd still put a couple bags of media in that area too just in case. It won't hurt to have back up media if you need to quickly set up a hospital tank or fry tank or whatever. You can use some plants in that area to help use some of the nitrates.

 

[TexasMFK31]

Makes sense, but I'd have to get heaters or a controller with an automatic shutoff feature; the whole reason for isolating the return pump from everything else is to make it impossible for the tank to flood even if all the drains clog, and preventing the biomedia from running dry.

So maybe move the D-E baffle forwards 2", put the heating elements on that and have the temperature probe at the far end? I wanted a bubble trap there because the air pump for the biomedia chamber is going to introduce a lot of bubbles I imagine, but I suppose those aren't the problematic sort of micro bubbles to be worried about. That would add even more room for equipment in the chamber, but I'm already not entirely sure what I'm going to put in there.

Probably some stuff for nutrient export because the biomedia I have is already capable of removing more waste than my fish could possibly produce.

I am curious how having the pump isolated keeps it from overflowing. The tank will overflow if you have the room in your sump to drain the tank past the drain.

I agree with twentyleagues to remove the baffle between E and F. Your chamber D is larger than C and bubbles will leave going into E. Your pump would have to suck the bubbles under the water an into the inlet of your pump to put them into the tank. I don't think you are doing that kind of turnover.

You say you aren't sure what you are going to put in chamber D. Why is that your largest chamber then? The biggest part of your sump real estate is a mystery ATM.

I agree with ragin_cajun and go full submerged media. I say that as someone who went full on like you are with multiple baffles to do this, and do that. Wasted my time and now have simple baffle in the middle to have a place for polyfil. Similar to this design socks in, media, and polyfil baffle:

https://smile.amazon.com/Eshopps-RS...qid=1536802054&sr=8-27&keywords=aquarium+sump

 

[InfinityARch]

I am curious how having the pump isolated keeps it from overflowing. The tank will overflow if you have the room in your sump to drain the tank past the drain.

I agree with twentyleagues to remove the baffle between E and F. Your chamber D is larger than C and bubbles will leave going into E. Your pump would have to suck the bubbles under the water an into the inlet of your pump to put them into the tank. I don't think you are doing that kind of turnover.

You say you aren't sure what you are going to put in chamber D. Why is that your largest chamber then? The biggest part of your sump real estate is a mystery ATM.

I agree with ragin_cajun and go full submerged media. I say that as someone who went full on like you are with multiple baffles to do this, and do that. Wasted my time and now have simple baffle in the middle to have a place for polyfil. Similar to this design socks in, media, and polyfil baffle:

https://smile.amazon.com/Eshopps-RS...qid=1536802054&sr=8-27&keywords=aquarium+sump

I kind of mispoke, isolating the pump doesn't prevent a flood, but it does prevent the biomedia from being run dry if the drains clog. As far as the media goes, as I said this is in part because I like building and tinkering with stuff, and I'd like to be able to convert the system to saltwater if I opt for such a change later on.

I will drop the bubble trap setup though, using only 1 baffle (and less space) for the final chamber, and I'll increase the size of the main biomedia chamber. As far as what's going in the big, empty chamber, my fallback plan is a refugium for extra plants, algae and macroinvertebrates like daphnia that I can supplement the tank's feeding with.

 

[twentyleagues]

Something you may or may not know is all evaporation will accumulate in....or should I say out of the last section in your sump. So you do not want this to small or yoy will have your pump running dry.

 

[InfinityARch]

Something you may or may not know is all evaporation will accumulate in....or should I say out of the last section in your sump. So you do not want this to small or yoy will have your pump running dry.

I'll drop the height of the final baffle as far as I can without introducing the possibility of flooding if the drains clog.

 

[twentyleagues]

I'll drop the height of the final baffle as far as I can without introducing the possibility of flooding if the drains clog.

If you are worried about air bubbles from the fluidized media chamber then put that last baffle in at the L1 heater location. You want room in your return chamber. It's amazing how fast you can run a pump dry. Any baffle that is actually doing what its intended in that area is going to cut your return chamber down for available water to return. I dont remember what size or if you said what size this sump is but looking at the break down I'd say a 50g. If it is and its 18" deep your return area will currently hold 1.4 gallons of water. I'd loose .5 gallon in my 75 to evaporation in about a day or a little more. So after a day maybe a day and a half you'd be at .9g. If you move or remove that baffle you'd double it so almost 3 gallons. With that you will have a longer time in between top offs and protect your pump from running dry or sucking water from the surface bringing air with it causing cavitation and sending at least air bubbles to your display at worst destroying your pump. I'm just trying to help. I've already done all this multuple times. I wish I had all the time and money back that I wasted along the way especially when I had salt water. Buying this gadget or that thing or constantly upgrading or building some flaw into my system.

 

[InfinityARch]

If you are worried about air bubbles from the fluidized media chamber then put that last baffle in at the L1 heater location. You want room in your return chamber. It's amazing how fast you can run a pump dry. Any baffle that is actually doing what its intended in that area is going to cut your return chamber down for available water to return. I dont remember what size or if you said what size this sump is but looking at the break down I'd say a 50g. If it is and its 18" deep your return area will currently hold 1.4 gallons of water. I'd loose .5 gallon in my 75 to evaporation in about a day or a little more. So after a day maybe a day and a half you'd be at .9g. If you move or remove that baffle you'd double it so almost 3 gallons. With that you will have a longer time in between top offs and protect your pump from running dry or sucking water from the surface bringing air with it causing cavitation and sending at least air bubbles to your display at worst destroying your pump. I'm just trying to help. I've already done all this multuple times. I wish I had all the time and money back that I wasted along the way especially when I had salt water. Buying this gadget or that thing or constantly upgrading or building some flaw into my system.

The sump is about 30 nominal gallons, 36" x 12.5" x 16" made from .25" plate glass as far as I can tell. My calculations suggest with the height of the final baffle, about 3.9 gallons of water will be evacuated from the sump in the event that the pump runs dry due to drain clogs.

The display tank can take on maybe 4.6 gallons before flooding, accounting for the space taken up by the DT glass, which is 0.5" thick, but I'd rather not push my luck, since I'm using full siphon drains without a full bean animal style double redundant system.

I'm actually thinkning I should move the final baffle closer but make it shorter, down to 9.25", allowing 2" of evaporation (which is 3.5 gallons)

 

[InfinityARch]

So I've updated my sump's design in accordance with some of the criticism I received in this thread, and in accordance with how well the pipes fit together compared to my original design.

There's now considerably more room for the biomedia, and just enough unallocated space for a protein skimmer and a media reactor or two if I switch the tank over to saltwater.

I'm going to make some L brackets from scrap .25" acrylic, silicon those to the side of the sump, and fasten the grates in place with nylon screws; they don't need to be watertight, they just need to keep the fluidized biomedia from getting into other chambers and jamming stuff up. Let me know what you think.

 

[twentyleagues]

With that last chamber "f" being so small and where the baffle is, you run the risk of running your pump dry. Just remove that baffle. You can put your skimmer in c if you ever go saltwater. You can use lots of live rock in the dt for your bio and a biopellet reactor outside the sump for nitrate control a little more lr in the last chamber for extra bio. You'd want a airbubble trap between your skimmer and the return pump anyway.