bear with my, my sump idea may be confusing. What do ya'll think?

dragracer

dragracer

Member
Ok, let me start with giving you all my set-up. 75 gallon, 80lbs LR,mostly fish, with a couple of mushroom corals and a leather coral. Lighting, two 175 10k MH's, one 150 10k mh, moonglows and two blue actinics. 2 inch sandbed. I have a small Sea Reef wetdry and an HOB Protein Skimmer. Wet/dry is in the basement.
Here is my question/plan. I have an empty 29 gallon tank laying around. Its deep, not long. I also a large in sump skimmer I received from a friend that got out of the hobby. Its big, but all the labels are missing. I've never had a "real" protein skimmer before. What I would like to do, is gut my Sea Reef wet/dry except for the media tray, from there I would like to put the skimmer and pump in that and also use the skimmer's return as the source of water for a fuge in the 29, and put my return pump on the other side of my baffles in the 29? Does this make sense? i wanna do it this way because the pump and skimmer I have take up a lot of space. I guess my real question/concern is, will the skimmer provide enough water for the fuge and return pump. 1800gph. Ugh, I hope this makes sense........it was a lot clearer in my head before I put it all in writing!
thanks in advance.
 
monsinour

monsinour

Active Member
huh? LOL
Why dont you open up paint and diagram out what it is you want to do with that 29 gallon. I am not sure I am understanding correctly, but you want to use the pump on the skimmer to not only feed the skimmer, but also return the water from the basement to the DT?
 
dragracer

dragracer

Member
Everything will be in the basement. I want to butt the Sea Reef up to the 29. The Skimmer has two outlets on it, I want to run them both into the fuge to feed it water. Hang on, I'll see if I am competent enough to draw a diagram.
 
2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
It sounds doable but I think you'll have to drill the two tanks for bulkheads and connect them with pipe in order for the excess water that does not get picked up by the skimmer to bypass and make it's way to the fuge.
 
dragracer

dragracer

Member
What about putting a Y in the line off my overflow? I know its been done a million times, but drilling terrifies me.
 
2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
Yeah drilling is alot easier than most folks think. The issue is that all water needs to flow into the sump/return chamber. Your skimmer won't pick up all of the water that is being drained from the display tank. So unless you create a way for the excess water to flow from the skimmer tank to the fuge and onto the return then you'll run into the issue of flooding your skimmer tank and draining your fuge/return tank dry and burning out your pump. I really don't see anyway around this without drilling.
 
2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
I don't see the drawing. Try using the {insert image} icon for pics.
Here's what I'm talking about....
 
2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
Ok, yes I see it.

And from this design I will still say it won't work that way without a drain from one tank to the next. But, one idea that you could do if you don't want to drill the glass tank is to get a shorter glass tank and just drill the arcylic wet/dry near the top and have the drain come off of that tank and drop into the glass tank. Acrylic is completely easy to drill and you don't need a diamond coated bit to do it.
 
2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
Yes, something like this is totally doable. Acrylic wet/dry on the left and glass tank on the right.
 
2quills

2quills

Well-Known Member
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