"The most important consideration is that the sump must be large enough to handle the aquarium in question. There are two considerations in this regard. First, the sump must be able to handle the drainage from the aquarium when the pumps are shut off without overflowing. To view an animation of this, click here. For this reason, the sump will always be less than full when the pumps are running. Also, the sump must have enough water in it to provide the benefits described in the previous article, and to avoid problems such as noise and annoying bubbles. This handy online calculator can be used to determine the recommended volume of a sump that will be necessary to handle the overflow from a given sized aquarium. "
I think I'm missing something about the way the sump is set up. In my tank, there is no problem with the main tank overflowing the sump. I am using an overflow box, but using in tank overflows should accomplish the same thing... this being that the tank will never hold more water than slightly higer than the overflow. So, unless you have another source of water, you will never have a situation where more drains from the tank than you put in... when the pump stops your drainage from the main tank stops...
However, with the overflow box, I could lose syphon. This would cause the sump to empty into the main tank (via the sump return pump)... So, I need to make sure not to overfill the sump to avoid overflowing the main tank.... My setup is a 29g high tank with a 5 gallon bucket for sump (I'm probably going to use a second bucket soon)... for every 2 in. of bucket I fill .6 in. in the display tank... So I needed to adjust my overflow box to 2.5 inches below the top to keep 8 in. of water in it (about 4 gallons)
A properly set up tank with overflows, should never have this problem as it is very unlikely that the overflows would clog, and therefor allow the main tank to overflow...
If I filled the sump with the syphon broken and the tank full, I could overflow the sump (after fixing the overflow box)... but other than that, ther is no way to overflow the sump that I can see.
But, I've missed critical stuff before... so maybe you can point out what I missed this time.
Thanks,
jfl
I think I'm missing something about the way the sump is set up. In my tank, there is no problem with the main tank overflowing the sump. I am using an overflow box, but using in tank overflows should accomplish the same thing... this being that the tank will never hold more water than slightly higer than the overflow. So, unless you have another source of water, you will never have a situation where more drains from the tank than you put in... when the pump stops your drainage from the main tank stops...
However, with the overflow box, I could lose syphon. This would cause the sump to empty into the main tank (via the sump return pump)... So, I need to make sure not to overfill the sump to avoid overflowing the main tank.... My setup is a 29g high tank with a 5 gallon bucket for sump (I'm probably going to use a second bucket soon)... for every 2 in. of bucket I fill .6 in. in the display tank... So I needed to adjust my overflow box to 2.5 inches below the top to keep 8 in. of water in it (about 4 gallons)
A properly set up tank with overflows, should never have this problem as it is very unlikely that the overflows would clog, and therefor allow the main tank to overflow...
If I filled the sump with the syphon broken and the tank full, I could overflow the sump (after fixing the overflow box)... but other than that, ther is no way to overflow the sump that I can see.
But, I've missed critical stuff before... so maybe you can point out what I missed this time.
Thanks,
jfl
