aquarium sump

[mrsuarez]

Hi all, ive been in the saltwater aquarium trade now for only about a year and a half, so i still consider myself a newbie, ive been successfully maintaining a 55g reef tank for about the last year and so far its been a great learning experience...ive been running it on minimum equipment, canister filter, HOB skimmer, power heads, lights...so thats about where my knowledge ends...ive been wanting to upgrade my 55 to a 125 for a long time now, and recently went out on a limb and made the purchase....so now as soon as work allows i will start pieceing it all together...i plan to have a sump for biological filtration as well as a canister for mecanical filtration..so my question is, how big of a tank should i use for the sump and how many chambers should it have? (i only plan to have about 10 or so fish) and besides the lights skimmer heater all the obvious equipment what else is essential and absolutley necessary to keep the tank healty?...thanks and any and all advice is welcomed....

 

[Fishfrye]

The canister filter needs to go out the window if you sump the tank, you can use filter sock on your outlet into your sump to filter large particles and a big beast of a skimmer in the sump to remove organics and thats all the filtration you need unless you choose to use carbon or gfo to remove phosphates which can be ran in a media reactor which is also hidden under the stand in the sump. As for sump size I would go as big as you can fit under your stand. Sumps can be set up different ways with but I think the most common is 2 baffles, creating 3 different chambers. You can find different baffle setups all over the internet just use whats going to be best for you. You also need to think about an auto top off reservoir and pump system because a sumped tank has alot of evaporation. Some people incorporate a reservoir into their sump by adding a chamber to hold fresh water. Are you drilling the tank for an overflow or using a hang on overflow?

 

[mrsuarez]

Yes i will be taking it to a local glass shop to have it drilled, and yea i been seeing some stuff online about auto topoffs and will most likely be looking further into it, and i was thinking about using an old 55g tank i have for the sump too, so i guess ill go ahead and us it