2 Huge Tanks - 2 sumps vs 1

[mailoo]

I have a 225G salt tank.

and i have a 72inch long 210G i am starting to eyeball ... they are only 20 feet apart from each other.... and seeing as i want to have the 72 drilled if i make it a salt tank i could always move it right next to the other tank.

So whats does a guy do when he's got 2 huge tanks and 400G of water to skim and etc etc etc

1 Huge sump... with one mother of a skimmer.

or keep them seperate so if one goes bad you got a spare?

I would imagine 1 would be mixed reef with calm fish and the other would be predators FOWLR

Thoughts....

 

[Fiziksgeek]

I've seen it done both ways.

Its a little more efficient to run both tanks into a common sump. For example, one large skimmer is less expensive then 2 smaller ones, in general, for both upfront cost and operating cost. All other necessary equipment follows the same logic.

On the other hand, if they are separate, and one tank crashes, you have another which can hopefully absorb any survivors. Do a dip, and transfer to the good tank.


Though if one is going to be a reef and the other a FOWLR, you won't be able to easily put the contents of one into the other. If your reef tank crashes, you can't just stick the surviving corals into the predator tank and expect them to live! So maybe in that case, there really isn't a reason to keep the tanks separate.

 

[FishMaster1000]

If you were going two do 2 reefs I would say plumb them into the same sump...But since one is fo, I would setup two seperate sumps. Calcium and trace elements will be easier to monitor in the reef, and high nutrient levels will not become as much of an issue if the Fo is not plumbed into the reef. Just my $.02...

 

[WDLV]

I like the idea of larger water volumes. I have friends that do it as one large system who would tell you that each tank acts as though it's on a separate system in terms of chemistry. I hate chemistry, so I'm not the best person to ask about that.