Hello All,
I am having a minor issue with bubbles that I can't really sort out. It is not micro bubbles, just 5 or 6 larger bubbles every few seconds that I find really annoying.
I am wondering if theres an easy way to resolve this without altering the sump design/adding baffles and I am starting to wonder if my return pump might simply be too large.
My new reef build is a 70g display (36x20x24) using an external overflow (synergy reef) with a Bean Animal style drain system into an Eshopps R-200 Gen 3 Sump.
My return pump is an Eheim 1262 plumbed into 3/4" PVC into a manifold which feeds my GFO/Carbon reactor and my Avast Marine recirc protein skimmer and is split with a wye into dual 3/4" loc-line returns back into the tank.
The layout/design of the sump is attached.
Given the above, is there a chance my return pump is too large? I figured with head loss and the manifold the real flow rate is probably close to about 500GPH, so it should be <10x turnover through the sump, but looking in the return area it seems like some of the bubbles are being caused by the rush of water coming from the skimmer area to the return area and if I remove the filter sponge media that came with the sump, the flow into the return from the refugium area seems to generate a lot of bubbles also.
I'd really rather not use the filter media to stop bubbles as I don't want to have to clean them all the time but really I'll do anything to get rid of these bubbles, including using the filter sponges or even a different type of filter sponge. There are two areas where the sump came with filter sponges, one is the area that flows from the refugium into the return and the other is the area that goes from the skimmer chamber to the return, although when I put the one in the skimmer return area the water just flows across the top of the sponge and bypasses the baffle completely.
Right now I have three ideas I think might help. One is to put a 90 on the pump intake and face it toward the bottom of the return area in hopes it might prevent the bubbles from getting sucked in, the second is to put a valve on the return to restrict the flow through the sump a little bit, but I really want to avoid that as I don't want to generate additional heat and decrease the life of the pump at all. The third is to get some different type of filter media that might do a better job of preventing the bubbles than the stuff that came with it would that I could stick into the baffle areas.
Any ideas would be appreciated!
I am having a minor issue with bubbles that I can't really sort out. It is not micro bubbles, just 5 or 6 larger bubbles every few seconds that I find really annoying.
I am wondering if theres an easy way to resolve this without altering the sump design/adding baffles and I am starting to wonder if my return pump might simply be too large.
My new reef build is a 70g display (36x20x24) using an external overflow (synergy reef) with a Bean Animal style drain system into an Eshopps R-200 Gen 3 Sump.
My return pump is an Eheim 1262 plumbed into 3/4" PVC into a manifold which feeds my GFO/Carbon reactor and my Avast Marine recirc protein skimmer and is split with a wye into dual 3/4" loc-line returns back into the tank.
The layout/design of the sump is attached.
Given the above, is there a chance my return pump is too large? I figured with head loss and the manifold the real flow rate is probably close to about 500GPH, so it should be <10x turnover through the sump, but looking in the return area it seems like some of the bubbles are being caused by the rush of water coming from the skimmer area to the return area and if I remove the filter sponge media that came with the sump, the flow into the return from the refugium area seems to generate a lot of bubbles also.
I'd really rather not use the filter media to stop bubbles as I don't want to have to clean them all the time but really I'll do anything to get rid of these bubbles, including using the filter sponges or even a different type of filter sponge. There are two areas where the sump came with filter sponges, one is the area that flows from the refugium into the return and the other is the area that goes from the skimmer chamber to the return, although when I put the one in the skimmer return area the water just flows across the top of the sponge and bypasses the baffle completely.
Right now I have three ideas I think might help. One is to put a 90 on the pump intake and face it toward the bottom of the return area in hopes it might prevent the bubbles from getting sucked in, the second is to put a valve on the return to restrict the flow through the sump a little bit, but I really want to avoid that as I don't want to generate additional heat and decrease the life of the pump at all. The third is to get some different type of filter media that might do a better job of preventing the bubbles than the stuff that came with it would that I could stick into the baffle areas.
Any ideas would be appreciated!
