Baffled Over Baffles. . . HELP PLEASE!!

[DisneyMatt]

Good afternoon everyone!!

As many of you know I am in the process of building my new salt water aquarium set up. I am currently in the Sump design process. I finally have my tank that will be used as the sump tank. It is a 55 gallon tank. It is 48 inches long, 13-1/2 inches "wide" and it is 19 inches deep.

My question to you all is how do I go about placement of the baffles, and how many do I need?? Once I figure out the placement of my baffles I will be taking my tank to a local company who will be installing the baffles for me. They are very familiar with doing sump systems locally, so I trust them to install them correctly. However, I need something to go in with, and show them, "Okay, this is where this baffle needs to be, this is how high off the bottom it should be..." things like that.

I don't know how many separate filtration areas I need, nor do I know how many baffles I need, nor do I know how to decided when ones the water flows under, and which ones the water flows over...

HELP PLEASE!!!

Any advice you all can provide on baffle placement is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

~ Matt

 

[Sniperhank]

You can have as many as you want. What are you trying to do with the sump?

 

[DisneyMatt]

^ Really good filtration for my tank!

~Matt

 

[Mebbid]

^ Really good filtration for my tank!

~Matt

That's about as vague as an answer can get

There's an obscene number ways to set a sump up and not many of them are inherently wrong.

The first section: This should be the return big enough to house your skimmer. After that I like to put a bubble trap.

The Second section (the biggest): is the refugium part. You can keep live rock or sand in here as well but I prefer to keep it empty for ease of cleaning.
After this is a good idea to put some mechanical filtration but it's absolutely not necessary.

The Third section: The last section is the return. The size of this will determine how often you will need to top up the tank. It's easier to get away with a smaller one if you have an auto filling device.

Of course, there's dozens of different ways to customize this basic design.

This is a good example of a basic sump design, except in mine the water is flowing the opposite direction.