Sump Design Help

[13thmonkey]

i am having a difficult time keeping filtration working well and looking good too. i have a 55 gal and homemade stand. the stand is supported in the middle by a wall. i currently am using a ehim 2215 can filter, and a 125 gal super needdle wheel skimmer. what i am thinking about doing is buying a couple of smaller glass aquariums from walmart and making a sump filter and a mud filter. beacause of the supporting wall in the stand i would have to use two tanks. in the first one off the intake i would like to place my superskimmer. them pipe the water through the supporting wall to a refugium/mud filter. this would allow me to rid the tank of all the hang on items on the tank, and place them in the stand. this would also let me get rid of the DSB in the tank . what i need from the infinate resources of this forum is a little design help, and equipment ideas.

 

[SkiFletch]

I'd use two 10g tanks connected by bulkheads for the sump tank itself, but I'd first consider how are you going to achieve overflow? Overflow box? Internal Durso? External Calfo?

 

[13thmonkey]

by overflow are you refering to, off the main tank? if so i'd more than likely use a C.P.R. overflow or somthing simular, that is unless anyone has any better options, i always hate doing things twice when it can be done once correctly.i have never heared of the internal durso or the external calfo, before. Now the 10gal connected by bulk heads i guess im lost by this. how would you do it? my room in the base is limited to two spaces H30"xW23"xD15". to use two tens for the sump i would have to stack them to use inside one bay of the base. is this what you were talking about? i think the average ten gal is about 12"x20"x10".

 

[SkiFletch]

Wait a minute, how much room do you have underneath your stand? Typical measurements are length (side to side), width (front to back), and height (bottom to top).

 

[13thmonkey]

length 23",width15", height 30" per side. there is a dividing wall in the middle giving me two compartments of the formentioned demensions. the overall external length of the base is 48.25"

 

[SkiFletch]

Wow thats a wide stand. Are you sure you have a 55?

So you can only use one bay? Well then in that case you're pretty much going to use a single 10g tank for a sump tank. As for overflows, CPR hob overflows work well and probably the safest option since the tank allready has livestock in it. I'd go with that. Do you allready have a pump you're going to use?

 

[13thmonkey]

yes it is kinda wide. the tank is a wallmart 55 gal by allglass. the wallmart stands were hidious, so built my own stand. i dont have any idea as to the best kind of pump. any sugg. will help. are there any less costly alternitives to the cpr overflow. everywhere i look they are in the $70.00 range? for what there is to them i would expect them to be cheaper. here is the stand as it sits. messy huh?

 

[SkiFletch]

Yeah, a CPR is really the only one that I would trust longterm. There are cheaper ones out there but they dont have some of the anti-flooding protections of the CPR. So expensive cause they're all custom built and lets just say the market isn't all that big . I've built my own, but man was it a PITA and I woudlnt ever want to tell someone to try making hteir own.

 

[13thmonkey]

any ideas on a pump? does the combo sump on one side fuge on the other sound self defeating?

 

[SkiFletch]

Well, it sounds like a good idea to me but then you'll not have enough space for your canister filter . Then again, a canister filter really isn't all that necessary. As for a pump, look into a Mag 5 or so, but you really need to figure out what the capacity of your overflow is first and then match the pump to that.

 

[13thmonkey]

yeah the canister would be put to good use on my chiclid tank. your probably getting ready to pull your hair out but, if i did do the sump and fuge idea would one pump be enough to work the whole system? if so would do you think it would be best to place it after both filter tanks and just draw through both of them?

 

[SkiFletch]

yeah the canister would be put to good use on my chiclid tank. your probably getting ready to pull your hair out but, if i did do the sump and fuge idea would one pump be enough to work the whole system? if so would do you think it would be best to place it after both filter tanks and just draw through both of them?

Absoloutely. Use one pump and connect the tanks together with bulkhead or tank fittings. Drain from the display into one tank, and pump out of the other. Totally the way to go for that setup

 

[13thmonkey]

i guess i am a little lost on the bulk heads concept. would that require drilling the ends of the tank? or would there be somthing like PVC tubes from one to the other in a over the top of one to over the top of the other. making a PVC "U" tube. please feel free to call me simple at any time you feel like doing so.

 

[SkiFletch]

Thats correct, the bulkheads would require drilling both tanks. Doing so is actually the safer of the two options. The problem with an inverted U tube like you've drawn is that over time air bubbles will get trapped in the tube and eventually break the siphon... When that happens the pump side empties and the drain side overflows onto your floor... A bulkhead setup cannot break siphon and will never give you water on the floor...