20L Sump Plans

[adrianreece]

I am planning to build a sump for my 60G tank and I wanted someone to look it over and let me know if I am on the right track or not. I have done a lot of reading about how to design your sump, but this will be my first one. Thanks!

 

[thegrun]

It looks to me like the return pump section is too small. You want the return pump section big enough to handle all the drain down water that occurs when you turn your return pump off. So if you set the running return pump water level at 2" above the top of the return pump you would probably need room for at least 3 more gallons of water which would drain down into your sump when you turn off the return pump or lose power. I would set the baffle in the first section (skimmer) at 10" and put your skimmer up on a platform, the baffle after your bubble trap would then be at 9.5" and the baffle at the other end of the refugium would also be at 9.5". I don't see a need for the last bubble trap. Unfortunately you will still likely need to increase the width of your return section even with the increased height.

 

[adrianreece]

It looks to me like the return pump section is too small. You want the return pump section big enough to handle all the drain down water that occurs when you turn your return pump off. So if you set the running return pump water level at 2" above the top of the return pump you would probably need room for at least 3 more gallons of water which would drain down into your sump when you turn off the return pump or lose power. I would set the baffle in the first section (skimmer) at 10" and put your skimmer up on a platform, the baffle after your bubble trap would then be at 9.5" and the baffle at the other end of the refugium would also be at 9.5". I don't see a need for the last bubble trap. Unfortunately you will still likely need to increase the width of your return section even with the increased height.

Thanks for the heads up. I was thinking that the whole sump would fill up when the power went out, and I see now that this would not be great if all the chambers overflowed into each other every time I wanted to do a water change.

I really want to keep the refugium, so I am going to see if I can find a container to set next to the sump for the ATO water, maybe a small trash can or something that won't take up too much space.

I will rethink the design and post up another drawing once I have figured something out. Thanks again for the help! I want to make sure that I do this right the first time!

 

[adrianreece]

I have revised my sup design. It seems that the sump space will be more useful with a separate ATO reservoir. I will adjust the height of my 3/4" Loc Line return nozzle so that it is just below the water surface to minimize how much water drains to the sump when the pump is off.

Any recommendation as to which chamber the reactor runs in? I have a BRS dual reactor powered by a MJ1200 pump running GFO and Carbon.