Setting up a sump for a 500l Tank

[HOT SAUCE]

Hi all,

i need help with setting up the sump for a friend of mine 500l marine tank. the Equipment i have is as follows:

1 x Sump - L58 H60 W48 aprox. 167 liters
1 x REEF OCTOPUS protein skimmer - SSS2000INT - with 1000lph pump
1 x REEF OCTOPUS bio-pellet reactor - BR140
1 x REEF OCTOPUS pump - 1000lph
1 x REEF OCTOPUS pump - 3000lph





can you please assist me with the sump layout and mostly with how should the water flow go. my idea is that from the tanks over flow the water should go into the chamber where the skimmer is... from there the water should go into another chamber where the bio-pellet reactor is and from there the water should go into a third chamber with live rock for the final stage of filtration before it goes into the last chamber which will house only the return pump. now i have two problems:

1) the skimmer and the pump that feeds the bio reactor are both 1000lph where the return pump is 3000lph which will cause too much water coming back into the sump and causing the chambers to over flow thus mixing the clean and dirty water.

2) we were advised by the person that we got the equipment from to have the protein skimmer and the bio reactor return the water back into the protein skimmer chamber and from there the water will overflow into the chamber with the live rock, which doesn't make sense to me because i don't understand why would i want to mix water that has just been cleaned with water coming directly from the tank.

i'm very new to this and would appreciate all help and advise from the more experienced members.. please let me know if somethings are not clear and thanks for your help in advance

 

[HOT SAUCE]

hi guys... any ideas???

 

[chas84]

I' not an expert on setting up a sump with reactors, but the basics are: Firts mechanical filtration (eg skimmer), then biological (eg dsb or liverock), then chemical (eg phos remover, carbon, etc).

I'm sure @RiaanP and others will be able to guide you better.

 

[Jayceew]

Will this sump fit underneath the tank? How much space do you have in terms of height? The sump you have here is quite high at 60cm, looking at the skimmer in the sump you will have to raise it out of the water by quite a lot, meaning that if you raise the skimmer higher by perhaps a further 20cm to 30cm the total height is going to be higher than 80cm. If the stand is only 90cm high this wont leave you with much space to remove the skimmer cup.

 

[RiaanP]

the chamber where the skimmer is... from there the water should go into another chamber where the bio-pellet reactor is and from there the water should go into a third chamber with live rock for the final stage of filtration before it goes into the last chamber which will house only the return pump.

So you want 4 chambers in the footprint of 58 by 48?
The part of reactor output going to skimmer you got right.

If you really want to use that sump, Rather drop 2 chambers, just have skimmer and reactor next to each other and have a return chamber. Somewhere you need a RO container as well, because after putting your lights on a timer, fitting a ATU is the next step in automation.

Why so small sump under a 500L tank?

 

[HOT SAUCE]

@Jayceew, yes the stand is quite high at 1.2m so there is plenty of space under it.

@RiaanP, its all the space we have under the tank. in fact we'll have to put all the fixtures above the sump as there wont be any space on the sides. also thats the same reason why we decided that we make the sump so high so we can have more water volume.

at first i could not understand why would i want to dump the clean water that comes out of the skimmer and the reactor back with the water from the tank but now i understand that due to the high volume of water that goes through the skimmer and reactor each hour it doesn't really make a difference. it seems thou that we will have to divide the sump in three parts as we want to have a compartment with live rock and a empty compartment just for the return pumps.

 

[RiaanP]

do your cabinet got a fix vertical support plank in the middle under the tank?

 

[HOT SAUCE]

no it doesn't... thats if you mean support for the sump. it will stay directly on the on the ground but on styrofoam of course which s about 2cm thick.

 

[HOT SAUCE]

I managed to figure the sump setup. i'll post some pictures so if anyone has to deal with square sumps in the future can have an idea of how to go about with the over flows setup:

 

[HOT SAUCE]

more images coming ... it takes some time to upload them

 

[HOT SAUCE]

here we are setting up the overflow from the chamber where the skimmer will be to the long chamber in the front where we will have live rock and from there will have the last chamber with bubble trap for the return pumps and the protein reactor

 

[HOT SAUCE]

and this is the complete sump with the skimmer in operation.. let me know what you think