Sprockett
New member
I've been researching adding a sump to my setup, and possibly a fuge with a skimmer as well...
One thing that has really concerned me is overflowing the tank or the sump, I've read designs where having two tubes on the overflow would prevent possible clogging and prevent flooding.
But after thinking about it for a long time I'm not really comfortable with that solution, so I wanted to toss out an idea and see if anyone else has even attempted this:
To make things easy I'm going to assume that if you pull 2" off the top of the tank would be 2 gallons of water exactly, so you set your overflow to a depth of no more than 2".
Let's also say that our sump has 4 parts to it:
An Overflow chamber possibly with a filter.
A center Fuge part
A Micro Bubble trap
A Return Area
The problem here is that if your return area is larger than our estimated 2 gallons we run the risk of flood if there is a problem on the other end. If as the system is running and overflow is going into the return chamber and then a blockage happens, the return pump is going to empty out the return chamber until we flood.
If however you used baffles before and after the main part of the center tank (or fuge) and kept them level with each other, then reduced the size of your return chamber to no more than say 1 gallon (or less in our example). Then the only time water would flow into your return chamber was when it was flowing in from the overflow and pushing water over into the return area, if the water stopped for any reason then the most that could be pumped in would be 1 gallon before it stopped.
Now I'm not sure about the rest of you but if something can go wrong around here it will, Mr Murphy is practically a member of our family at this point so I've learned over time to take every precaution
There could be some problems with a setup like this, for instance you could run the return pump dry and it would have to be able to keep up with the overflow. If you left the overall volume of the whole setup (above the baffles for instance or have an overflow off the return area) enough that it could take our full 2 gallons and not flood the sump then you have insurance against flooding if the return fails as well..
At some point today I'll see if I can draw something up showing what I'm talking about, it's kind of hard to describe but I'm sure it will work. I'm going to find a plastic shop in the local area and see about putting one together to run some tests one...
This could be fun
One thing that has really concerned me is overflowing the tank or the sump, I've read designs where having two tubes on the overflow would prevent possible clogging and prevent flooding.
But after thinking about it for a long time I'm not really comfortable with that solution, so I wanted to toss out an idea and see if anyone else has even attempted this:
To make things easy I'm going to assume that if you pull 2" off the top of the tank would be 2 gallons of water exactly, so you set your overflow to a depth of no more than 2".
Let's also say that our sump has 4 parts to it:
An Overflow chamber possibly with a filter.
A center Fuge part
A Micro Bubble trap
A Return Area
The problem here is that if your return area is larger than our estimated 2 gallons we run the risk of flood if there is a problem on the other end. If as the system is running and overflow is going into the return chamber and then a blockage happens, the return pump is going to empty out the return chamber until we flood.
If however you used baffles before and after the main part of the center tank (or fuge) and kept them level with each other, then reduced the size of your return chamber to no more than say 1 gallon (or less in our example). Then the only time water would flow into your return chamber was when it was flowing in from the overflow and pushing water over into the return area, if the water stopped for any reason then the most that could be pumped in would be 1 gallon before it stopped.
Now I'm not sure about the rest of you but if something can go wrong around here it will, Mr Murphy is practically a member of our family at this point so I've learned over time to take every precaution
There could be some problems with a setup like this, for instance you could run the return pump dry and it would have to be able to keep up with the overflow. If you left the overall volume of the whole setup (above the baffles for instance or have an overflow off the return area) enough that it could take our full 2 gallons and not flood the sump then you have insurance against flooding if the return fails as well..
At some point today I'll see if I can draw something up showing what I'm talking about, it's kind of hard to describe but I'm sure it will work. I'm going to find a plastic shop in the local area and see about putting one together to run some tests one...
This could be fun
