Oceanic Sump I'm stumped

[JackBurton]

I new to using sumps for filtration and was wondering if anyone has any experience with Oceanic sumps? I think I have a good idea of how a sump is supposed to work but I'm missing something with this one. My main concern is with the supply pipe. In this sump the supply ends at a glass plate above a drip plate above the bioballs. Now my understanding is that the supply should be under the water level but the water should be low enough to except the backflow should I lose the siphon. I'm really confused as I don't see any way this will happen in it's current configuration.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[scuba_steve]

the return is made to dump the water over the balls which shouldnt be submerged in water ! the bacteria will go on the balls which in turn filters your water ! if the return was under the water line it would never reach the balls for filtration

[amosf]

Don't know the sump you are talking about, but perhaps you could look at doing a syphon/ overflow system before the filter - ie something like http://www.guarriello.net/overflow.htm
Actually there are better (or other) ways to do it, but I don't have a diagram...

[loganj]

Oh...the infamous Oceanic sump...you either love them or hate them. Personally, I hate them but not because they don't work...they work great. Anyway, here is how this thing is set up. The water dumps through the top into a chamber in the center of the sump. This overflows onto the drip plate which drips the water onto the bioballs. It then exits the center chamber where the balls are and is pumped back up to the tank. This is on the model 100 and 150. Possibly yours is set up differently than this. The reason I don't like them is that they are so tall and they don't really have enough room to get your hands all the way down in the outer area of the sump.

[JackBurton]

I filled the tank this morning and amazinglty the hole thing started to work. Yea....

Thanks for the help you guys rock.