Sump Filter Better Than Canister For Fresh Water Aquarium?

[pokerking]

hi,

Sump filter better than canister for fresh water aquarium?

I am thinking of using saltwater aquarium setup for freshwater. Does my electricty bill doubles because of big pump?.

What is advantage /disadvantage and what is best sump filter?.

thanks
alexk

 

[mixmaster jay]

i run a 4x2x2 sump on my freshwater setup and the water is exceptionally clean due to the large amount of filtration media that is in there also my air pump is in there and my 2, 300w heaters and a skimmes so no hardwhere at all in the tank , it will also add more water volume to the setup thus making the water chemistry more stable
My electric bill hasn't changed that much the main thing is the 750w metal halides that use the most electric

 

[waterdrop]

I agree. If you separate out the various functions of a freshwater filter, media volume is a separate parameter from flow rate. While there are various reasons you might want to choose different flow rates, media volume that basically just performs better the bigger it is. Its easy to see that nature uses huge media volumes if natural systems are studied. Since a sump can have the next bigger volume after an external cannister its typically better in that regard. Perhaps the only questionable comparison areas would be noise and maintenance. It might be difficult to make a sump design or design execution be quite as quiet as a more tightly sealed external cannister and the cleaning of a sump might be more involved (though it would have to be done less often.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[mixmaster jay]

cleaning isn't that bad actually as all the rubbish is suspendid in the water and easy to suck up you can also just clean your media in the same water to just turn the pump off first lol you can also use outlet bags/socks that catch all the rubbish as it goes into the sump you just take it of once a week empty it and give it a quick wash and put it back on to your sump inlet . And my sump isnt too bad on noise either but it is noisier than an external lol but thats more the down pipes in the tank that makes the noise

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, often any extra noise in a very large tank with a large sump system doesn't really seem a design fault, its just gets more and more difficult as everything gets bigger. There's larger amounts of water being moved and any places where it spashes, well there will be more of that and the pumps have to be bigger with commensurately larger hum and flow noises. The lights will have more electrical hum. Just a lot of little things like that building up that often can't really be helped.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[saltynay]

Sumps are better then canisters as they are much larger however if you want a small but extremely efficient filter try fluidised bed filtration. I already did the hard maths part here but now I am in Singapore away from my tanks and didn't have the time to build it. You will need mechanical filtration such as gravel based particle filtration system with filter floss or just some sponge with filter floss.