DIY 40 gal sump/fuge

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bioteacher

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Feb 18, 2012
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I will be building my own new sump for my 125g reef very soon and I wanted to document for anyone interested in following. It should be done and running relatively quickly as I have already done quite a bit of the up front research and gathering of supply.

I will be replacing a wet/dry sump with a 3 chamber sump with fuge. I am using a 40g breeder. My drain section with two 4" socks and skimmer will be in the chamber on the left. That section is 10" wide with an under-over set of baffles. I could have squeezed it to 9" and would have been alright on the skimmer but 10" is needed for the two sock hangers. I decided to go this way to leave me some flexibility on where I put the filter socks. At 9" I would have had to put one in the fuge for sure. I might end up putting one in the fuge anyway, but this way I have the flexibility to try both configurations.

The fuge will be the center section and it will be 13" wide ending with an over-under-over set of baffles to act as a bubble trap. The first of these three is at 11.5" height which is 0.5" shorter than the baffle at the left of the fuge. The last of the bubble trap baffles is at 11". Finally, the width of the return chamber is 9.5".

Comments? Improvements? I need them by Saturday morning cause that is when the glass goes in.
 
Add a fourth baffle to the return section trust me. I have the three baffle system and unless you have an ato it will create a waterfall effect which will cause stray bubbles to suck into your return and coming out as micro bubbles eliminating the point to all your bubble traps lol
 
Pump with plumbing. Got all the PVC from menards. Boy, I stood in that isle contemplating things for like an hour. Plumbing is complicated!

I'm using a danner mag-18 as the pump. The white piece above the pump is a 1" check valve that will prevent back flow in the case of power loss. Above that is a ball valve to regulate flow. Finally, the T that sends water to 0.75" inside diameter tubing to the tank returns.
 
Mrc8858 said:
Add a fourth baffle to the return section trust me. I have the three baffle system and unless you have an ato it will create a waterfall effect which will cause stray bubbles to suck into your return and coming out as micro bubbles eliminating the point to all your bubble traps lol

I guess I could picture that happening as evaporation lowers the water level. ATO is part of my future but not for a while. Maybe I will consider a forth...problem is I already ordered all the glass from a local shop. Using 1/4" glass. All the quick places like Ace only have 1/8". That would probably be alright for this last baffle.
 
Ya its not really taking any pressure just diverting a small amount of water so I wouldn't be concerned if that baffle was 1/8. Plus since its submerged there's equal pressure on both sides unlike the tank walls being pushed out.
 
Mrc8858 said:
Ya its not really taking any pressure just diverting a small amount of water so I wouldn't be concerned if that baffle was 1/8. Plus since its submerged there's equal pressure on both sides unlike the tank walls being pushed out.

Part of me felt that way about all the baffles. I was gonna go 1/8" on all of them, but then a heard a bad story from someone on here that had 1/8" crack on him. The thought of braking down the whole thing to recaulk made me opt for 1/4"
 
I have more pix to share and stuff to explain, but my wife jacked the iPad which has all the photos. More to come later.
 
Ok, so here are a couple of tools I made to help me with getting the baffles in. They are modifications based on stuff that I saw on YouTube videos. I attached some rubber tubing to my caulk gun and duct taped the other end to a stick. I think this should help me get caulk into the joints between the baffles where there is only an inch of room. I saw a guy use the tUbing on his gun on the Internet, but he didn't have the stick which seemed to make it messier. Patent pending...

The second one is to help me scrape up the excess caulk from the joints. It is a scoopula from our labs at school (I am a science teacher, remember high school chemistry?) attached to a stick. The curved metal mimics a glazer's tool that they use to clean up joints (again based on a YouTube video). It should allow me to get nice clean joint and hopefully no leaks!
 
Ok last one is my lights. I went cheap with these. Clip on lights from home depot for $6 a pop and a 2 pack of cfl flood lights for $12. The bulbs are listed as 5000k which should work well for growing Chaeto.

Just waiting on the glass which should be ready on Friday. I will probably get the baffles in on Saturday, and maybe get this bad boy running early next week.
 
Ive made some progress. I have two baffles yet to put in after a second water test. Here is the order of how I put the baffles in.

View attachment 108076

Friday evening, I put in the lower baffle that separates the drain chamber from the fuge. I let that cure for 24 hours.

View attachment 108077

Saturday afternoon, I performed a water test of that chamber. I decided to wait on the upper baffle of this set until after the water test, so that if I had a leak, it would be easier to get to with the caulk gun.

View attachment 108078

Drained all the water out and dried things off really well. Set up the upper baffle for caulk. I used cut pieces of wood to maintain 1" gap between baffles and 9.75" wood on the chamber side. I used CD cases to maintain 1" under the baffle. Finally, a clamp to keep the glass against the wood braces. In hindsight, this was overly elaborate. Caulking this baffle proved to be a big messy disaster. My contraption with the hose failed. The gun could not provide enough pressure to push the caulk all the way down the hose because the hose stretched. Eventually, I had so much pressure in the caulk tube that the caulk busted out the back of the tube all over the piston of the gun. I thought if I used more rigid tubing that might solve my problem, so I took a trip to menards. Using rigid tubing was better. It got the job done, but still had the same problems. I wasted a lot of caulk out the back of the gun.

View attachment 108096

Final picture for now is of the left upper baffle caulk in as well as the first right baffle. I used a different method on the right baffle that proved to be way easier than cutting wood braces. I just used painters tape on one side of the baffle. Two pieces on each side and 3 on the bottom as well as one piece on each side where the top of the baffle meets the side wall. I caulked the other side, checked for alignment, and let that set for an hour. Then I took the tape off and caulked the other side. Worked like a charm and saved all the extra measuring and cutting. I would recommend this method.

Currently waiting on a full cure before I water test the center chamber. Once that passes, I will get the remaining 2 baffles into place.
 
Update: things have taken a little longer than expected because of things I failed to think about. I am upping the volume of my system by over 20 gal and I didn't think to mix water till yesterday. Also had to build a stand for the skimmer out of egg crate, and I wanted to water test my pump to make sure my plumbing wasn't leaking. I think that I am ready to get this thing wet tonight. Below are some pixs from Sunday through today.

View attachment 108862

Water test of center chamber

View attachment 108863

To install the upper baffle on the right side, I decided to lay a bead of silicone before putting the baffle up

View attachment 108864

so that I could then just put the baffle in place, tape it to hold and then use my little tool to push the silicone into the joint. An hour later I pulled off the tape and siliconed the other side. The next day I did the same thing with the final baffle. I performed a water test on the final chamber the next day. No leaks anywhere! Woohoo!

View attachment 108865
 
Got everything up and running. It was a lot tighter once I got it under the tank. Everything is working well so far. Now I just need to get the fuge going.

How much lr should I get for an 11.6 gal fuge?

Will post pictures of the sump running later. Too tired.
 
bioteacher said:
Got everything up and running. It was a lot tighter once I got it under the tank. Everything is working well so far. Now I just need to get the fuge going.

How much lr should I get for an 11.6 gal fuge?

Will post pictures of the sump running later. Too tired.

As much as you can fit while leaving room for macro algae
 
Finally got everything finished. I just bought 10 lbs of LR, a nugget of Chaeto, and 40 lbs of argonite sand. The only thing not in I the sand. I want to siphon out some sand from the display tank and put that old sand in the fuge. Then put new sand in the DT. The reason is that my sand in the DT is very course and not very aesthetically pleasing. Also, it is too course for sifters and I want to get a goby really badly. .
 
So, I have an issue now. Ever since hooking up the sump, my corals have looked terrible. My zoas and ricordia are all closed up. Kenya tree is all drooped over. Montipora polyps seem closed and color is faded.

I suspect one of three things. Let me know your thoughts and recommendation on what to do.

1) could it be the silicone, PVC cement, or superglue that I used on the sump? I used GE silicone I per recommendations on forums. The PVC cement was just whatever they had at home depot.

2) I removed maybe 5lbs of sand from the DT. Most was via siphon, but I got 3 scoops out with a net and it stirred up a lot of crud. I don't clean my sand. Maybe this is the source of something bad.

3) the new pump has upped the flow a little bit. It is not drastic. I don't think this is it, but I could be wrong. This pump is 1800gph and the old pump was about 1200.
 
Have you tested the water cause stirring up the sand can release a lot of stuff back into the system. That's what id put my money on
 
Mrc8858 said:
Have you tested the water cause stirring up the sand can release a lot of stuff back into the system. That's what id put my money on

You were right. I tested (can't believe that I didn't think to, bad habits, my parameters were stable for so long that I just stopped testing) and ammonia is at about 1.5, trites 0, trates 10. I mixed up some water. I will test again in the morning and if the numbers aren't down, I will change the water.

So any suggestions on getting more sand out of the display tank without facing this situation again?
 
Remove it when you do water changes and just suck it out with the siphon so it and any debris goes with it. If you wanna reuse just rinse it out afterwards
 
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