Sump

[mike0513]

I was thinkin of making a sump for my 29 gallon FW tank. would it be possible to have one sump running on both my 29 and 10 gallon tanks? I was thinking this because it would be 39 gallons of tank water then what ever water was in the sump and i know more water means easier to care for.

I know some say dont bother with a sump for FW. But i have time and money and want to make my own and it can only help right? so if it wont work for one sump with two tanks im atleast going to make one for the 29 gallon

thanks for any input and or advice

Mike

 

[jsoong]

Yes you can, lfs do it all the time (they have 10 - 20 tanks all hooked to a big sump.) You do have to design the plumbing correctly or you risk a flood. And with a central sump like that, you will have cross contamination between tanks .... so make sure all the tanks are healthy & compatible (ie same temp, parameters, etc.) <Don't hook up your QT or hosp tank to a central system!>

The safest way to run a central sump is to have independent lines for each tank. you would have passive drains from the tanks to the sump, and separate pumps for each of the tanks. <There are other setups that allow the tanks to share one line or one pump, but that has higher risk of flooding, which I don't think is worth the money saved.>

BTW - run as large a sump as you have room for. Tiny sumps don't really help too much, and big sumps allows you to upgrade to bigger/more tanks down the road. <The ideal is a fish room in your house with a few hundred gallon sump where you tie in all your tanks.>

 

[mike0513]

at petco they have a 20 Gallon tank for 12 dollars so thats what i was thinking...ill see if they have a bigger one. do you know of a site or could u help with a design for this?

 

[jsoong]

Melevsreef.com - What is a Sump?

This is a good write up about setting up a sump safely. Note the half dozen links at the bottom that gives further details. Although the setup is one tank one sump, you can add as many tank to the sump as you like using the design, provided that each tank has its own passive overflow/drain & return pump. The only mod to that would be a big enough sump with enough headroom to take all the water coming from all your tanks during a power out.

A 20 gal isn't very big for a central sump. You need maybe 10-20% of your tank volume for the headroom, so you can only keep ~10 gal of water in the 20 gal sump. Just like anything to do with fish, the bigger the better!

 

[mike0513]

YouTube - How to - Aquarium overflow / sump / refugium. Some tips <-- this guys sump seems to be almost totally full..is there a down side to the way he has his system set up?

 

[mike0513]

oh and jsoong...thanks for that website and the advice about a bigger sump tank..im gonna find the biggest one i can

 

[Turbo V6 Camaro]

i have a 20gallone on my 75 and when off it easly fills half way. but wen running it only hs 1/3 full and when dry only about 3 inches of water

this way if some how my over flow would get plugged it can't over flow the main tank. not really sure how my 1.5 inch bulk head with 2 inch ID pipe would clog but.....

I also know that if I dump one gallon into the main the tank the sump level will rise by exactly 1 width of standared scotch tape.

 

[jsoong]

Downside to having a full sump is that when you have a power outage, and the tank drain down to the sump, you can have a flood. There are ways to set your overflow to limit the amount of water coming down so you can have more water in the sump .... but I like to leave an inch or 2 extra just to be safe.

Also, if you have a full sump, you will have to be careful with your return pump placement so you don't flood your main tank when your overflow fails. You either have to put the pump up high so it will run dry if there is no return of water from tank to sump, or have a water level sensor in the tank to cut off the pump when the level is too high. In a multiple tank system, you should have a cut off switch, since you can have failure of just one overflow and still have return of water from the other tanks to cause floods. <Come to think of it, LFS central systems use drilled tanks to minimize overflow failure.>

 

[Turbo V6 Camaro]

as long as you drill small holes you wont get much water to the sump.

I turn mine off every time i feed !!!