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To sump or not to sump

andy

Member
Joined
14 Sep 2007
Messages
261
Location
Lewes, East Sussex
Currently planning my 300 l planted tank....it will be approx 48 x 24 x 22. I was thinking about going along the sump route...ive had sumps in the past with reef aquariums and i've onlt ever found positives from them apart from the initial installation.

Does anyone run one on here ?...i would have the tank drilled which would then go into a 3 foot partitioned sump.

Section 1 would be bioballs (flocor, alphagrog floss etc)

section 2 would possibly be a refugium....sand/soil substrate which is lit with T8's and planted up. Shrimps can be kept in there and possibly left to breed.

Section 3 would be the return pump (pond pump maybe) plus all the other equipment. I don't know whether the CO2 could be injected nect to the return pump so it gets sucked in and returned back to the main tank.

What do you think ?...there's very little maintenance involved with sumps except topping up evaporation.

Your comments are welcome

Andy
 
aaronnorth said:
Sumps lose a lot of CO2 when the water is passing over the weir.

Not wishing to be too argumentative here Aaron, but do you have experience of this happening with a sump? It just seems to me that this is simply a bit more surface area exposed to the atmosphere - something we increase everytime we add more circulation or raise returns to agitate the surface! I also run a surface skimmer on the inlet of my external filter which functions much like a weir skimming the surface layer off the water. The only issue with a sump should be if there was lots agitation or the water splashed back into the sump. Or, of course, if you were using a trickle filter which would of course gas off huge amounts of CO2.

I can't see, and again I have no experience of using a sump either to back this up either, why a weir set up correctly and feeding to a sump that doesn't have a trickle tower without splashing back should gas off a lot of CO2 really. The only extra increase is the increase in surface area of the open sump. If you had the CO2 added via a reactor to the water returning to the tank then I think it would work very effectively.
 
Themuleous said:
I think the issue with sumps is that they waste CO2 and I think them might denitrify NO3 to N gas which would also then be wasted.

Sam

Denitrification will only occur in anoxic areas which will depend largely on the media used and the set up of the sump. A simple glass box filled with media will probably denitrify less than an enclosed external canister filter as the surface of the sump is exposed to the atmospheric oxygen.

If you used a trickle filter it will gas off ammonia and CO2, but if all the media is submerged it should function much like an open canister filter.
 
andy said:
Section 1 would be bioballs (flocor, alphagrog floss etc)

section 2 would possibly be a refugium....sand/soil substrate which is lit with T8's and planted up. Shrimps can be kept in there and possibly left to breed.

Section 3 would be the return pump (pond pump maybe) plus all the other equipment. I don't know whether the CO2 could be injected nect to the return pump so it gets sucked in and returned back to the main tank.

What do you think ?...there's very little maintenance involved with sumps except topping up evaporation.

Your comments are welcome

Andy

I'd forget about the refugium idea. You want the plants in the tank to use up all the nutrients and CO2 so they grow luxuriantly. If you really want somewhere safe for the shrimp to breed make a larger mechanical chamber at the start of the sump and let your shrimp breed in there! They will love picking over the foam or mechanical media like they do in my Juwel internal filter.

I'd simply have your feed from the tank entering the sump underwater (to reduce CO2 gassing off) then a mechanical media section first that is nice and easy to clean (and large enough to house some extra shrimp areas if you want), then a large biological media section and then finally a section for your return pump(s) and all the other equipment you want to put in. But if you have experience of marine sumps then you'll probably know more about all that stuff than me!
 
Not wishing to be too argumentative here Aaron, but do you have experience of this happening with a sump?
I can't see, and again I have no experience of using a sump either to back this up either, why a weir set up correctly and feeding to a sump that doesn't have a trickle tower without splashing back should gas off a lot of CO2 really.

I havent had experience, however common sense tells me that having it splashing down into the sump would gas off the CO2, but i agree with your second statement, having it setup correctly I dont see why it couldnt work.

Another question that has come to mind is about fertilisers - would you need to add more due to having the extra water volume in the sump?
 
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