Gathering parts for 125 setup, thought ideas would be good too :)

[Thinker1920]

I just got the tank, stand, and light today. I'm going slow to stretch my money as much as possible, and I promised myself I would pay off my credit card before I start up the tank, so I'm probably not going to actually start up till about a year for now but I thought this would be a great opportunity to setup everything right the first time instead of having to adjust once I'm up and running and gather lots of info.

So currently I have the 125 gallon tank (not drilled), stand (which I'm going to refinish) the light has 4 96 watt PC's and 250 watt MH, a 33 gallon breeder tank that I'll use as my sump, asm G3 skimmer, RODI with top off, and a 300 gph mag pump that I'm going to use as my return, I want to try the slower turn over through the sump approach.

I'm currently looking into sump designs, so far I'm thinking deep sand bed and growing cheato but that's all I got at the moment, I was thinking about splitting the water coming into the sump so some goes to the sand bed and some goes to the skimmer and have the pump in the middle for return, so that not all the water passes the skimmer. thoughts?

I was wondering about overflows too, I was thinking about getting one from http://www.glass-holes.com/ unless there's a better one out there, also was wondering if I should go for the one with two returns or just one?

For the return I was thinking about two returns at either end of the tank and using a one way value to prevent a siphon if the pump turns off thoughts?

and any other things I should consider in the pre-setup stage?

also i was thinking about building a platform out of 2 X 6 to raise the whole tank and beefing up the stand.

 

[jacksonpt]

Do some reading in the DIY forum.

Glass holes boxes are pretty good, though I'd always recommend at least 2 drains in case 1 gets plugged. Read up on the Beanimal and herbie designs... they are pretty similar, Bean's uses 3 drains for extra redundancy.

As far as the sump design... again, do some reading in the DIY forum. The widely accepted standard is drain/skimmer chamber -> return chamber -> fuge, with all the drain water dumping into the drain/skimmer and the return line being split between the display and the fuge. That way you can independently control flow rates through the skimmer section and the fuge.

 

[Thinker1920]

Thanks for the info I looked at both the Beanimal and the herbie, the Beanimal seems kinda intense, I had a 90 gallon in the past with just one overflow to the sump and it never clogged since it was a large diameter. I guess I just have a hard time picturing a situation where it would get clogged. I do think that a dual overflow isn't a bad idea, I was thinking about splitting the overflow instead of the return to feed the fuge/sandbed, so instead of having both overflow lines going to the skimmer section of the sump have one do that and the other feed the fuge but place a valve in it so it doesn't get as much flow as the skimmer. Would that cause problems? The only thing I can think of would be clogging the overflow line to the fuge because of the valve. Thoughts?

 

[foundnemo11]

i have a glass holes 1500 and I have had no problems. It is a bit noisy at first before the film stuff grows on it, but after a few days its quiet.