DIY 10 Gal Sump/Fuge. Ineed some help.

[woody189]

Hi. I'm setting up a Sump/Fuge for my 46 gallon tank. The sump/fuge will be a 10 gallon that will be located beside, and below the tank. Here is what I was thinking:
1) I didn't realize how large my skimmer. I THINK I will need about 8" for the skimmer compartment, which leaves about 7" of Fuge space. That's too little right?
2) Can I move/remove any of my baffles, or is the placement OK? I think I may have them backwards, in terms of which one is supposed to be higher than the other.
3) Should I place the skimmer outside the sump, and just leave the pump in? I don't want to do that, but is it necessary given my dimensions?
4) Do I need sand? I'll probably throw a couple pieces of LR in teh fuge, but is sand necessary?
I'm sure this is far from perfect, so please tell me what's wrong. Thanks.

 

[woody189]

sorry

 

[woody189]

here it is

 

[woody189]

bump

 

[life~reefer]

If this ends up working I may do the same thing! But bigger because my sump tank is a 40 gallon!
Hope it all works!
(I didn't answer because I have not researched this enough to make a helpful answer)

 

[nigerbang]

Originally Posted by woody189
http:///forum/post/2933039
here it is
With this design I see a couple flaws...
Sand will not be possible unless you reverse the baffles in the 1st section..
It shows the open end of the baffle being on the bottom.. That would keep stiring the sand up and working against you.
With limited room such as this I would run the skimmer outside the sump if possible

 

[jwagne267]

Hey, I have sort of the same setup and it works great but I have a 20 L.
Check out the pictures on my build thread. I dont have the exact measurements for the compartments but if you'd like just PM me and I'll send you the measurements.

 

[woody189]

Originally Posted by Life~Reefer
http:///forum/post/2934723
If this ends up working I may do the same thing! But bigger because my sump tank is a 40 gallon!
Hope it all works!
(I didn't answer because I have not researched this enough to make a helpful answer)
Thanks. I'll let you know how it runs once I get it up and running.
Originally Posted by NigerBang
http:///forum/post/2934730
With this design I see a couple flaws...
Sand will not be possible unless you reverse the baffles in the 1st section..
It shows the open end of the baffle being on the bottom.. That would keep stiring the sand up and working against you.
With limited room such as this I would run the skimmer outside the sump if possible
Yea, I was wondering that about the sand. I think I'll add an extra 4 inch baffle just so I can keep some sand. And I'm think i'm gonna have to keep the skimmer outside, I really didn't want to though.
Originally Posted by jwagne267
http:///forum/post/2934731
Hey, I have sort of the same setup and it works great but I have a 20 L.
Check out the pictures on my build thread. I dont have the exact measurements for the compartments but if you'd like just PM me and I'll send you the measurements.
You tank is real nice. Congrats...
What is the point of that little corner piece you have where hte intake for the sump is? What do you have in there, just LR?
DO you run a skimmer?
And what is that box that for w/ the 90' elbow?
And, your second baffle from the right looks like it's jsut a wall. The gap is on the bottom of the baffle right, so it's not touching the bottom of the tank?
I gotta lot of ?'s because like you said, my setup is a lot like yours.
Thanks
And 1 more question for everyone: how much space do I need for my fuge? I'm only going to keep some Chaeto, and maybe an inch or 2 of sand (which won't take up space) and afew pieces of LR, so do you think 7 inches would be enough?? If not, how big for fuge?

 

[jwagne267]

The little corner piece for the initial intake is simply there because in the beggining I put some liverock in there, but that turned out to trap a lot of detritus so I took them out and now it is just empty. Now I have just one piece of iverock in their solely for the purpose of a hideout for the living things that are in their. when ever I find a fireworm or rogue pod on the filter media I just throw them in there, the is actually alot of life in their now too. I don't run a skimmer and my levels are always very low except when I overfeed haha(my fish love me).
The 90 degree elbow goes into that little box which has little holes drilled into the bottom of it so that the flow doesnt kick up the sand in the fuge.
The top of that box stops water from splashing out...turned out the splashing gets kinda high without it.
The second baffle has a bgi slit about 1" cut into it and runs all the way to the side just because it was easier to glue it in that way instead of doing it with a spacer.
I don't know how much the spacing is as I am at work and can't measure it yet but part of the reason I have that box in there instead of another wall to stop the sand from getting stirred up is so I got an extra few inches of sandbed and rock in their.

 

[woody189]

Originally Posted by jwagne267
http:///forum/post/2934893
The little corner piece for the initial intake is simply there because in the beggining I put some liverock in there, but that turned out to trap a lot of detritus so I took them out and now it is just empty. Now I have just one piece of iverock in their solely for the purpose of a hideout for the living things that are in their. when ever I find a fireworm or rogue pod on the filter media I just throw them in there, the is actually alot of life in their now too. I don't run a skimmer and my levels are always very low except when I overfeed haha(my fish love me).
The 90 degree elbow goes into that little box which has little holes drilled into the bottom of it so that the flow doesnt kick up the sand in the fuge.
The top of that box stops water from splashing out...turned out the splashing gets kinda high without it.
The second baffle has a bgi slit about 1" cut into it and runs all the way to the side just because it was easier to glue it in that way instead of doing it with a spacer.
I don't know how much the spacing is as I am at work and can't measure it yet but part of the reason I have that box in there instead of another wall to stop the sand from getting stirred up is so I got an extra few inches of sandbed and rock in their.
THanks for the info. Don't worry about the measurements, because my layout is a little different, thanks though.
You helped a lot, but anyone else is welcome to give their ideas.

 

[walloutlet]

Woody,
Your in the exact same perdictament as I am. The problem I ran into with having a skimmer, pump for the skimmer (Aqua-C EV120 its 8 x 4 inches as well), return pump, bubble trap baffles it pretty much left me with 4l x 10w x 7h inches of space for a fuge. Essentially pointless IMO.
So what I ended up doing was just using the 10ga as a sump to basically heat the DT water, do water changes, water tests, etc... Then I just added a PVC T and a couple ball valves on the overflow and built a fuge in a separate container. I am lucky as the tank is against a wall, the other side of the wall is just a storage room so I ran the fuge lines into the storage room, lots of room there.
So I ended up having a 24ga DT, 10ga sump and a 30ga fuge. It's nice as it sits now I have 1.5 times the water for the display tank sitting in sump and fuge.
There is a 100 different ways you could attack this, it all depends on your space available. Something I am defintely learning more about, its amazing how much and quickly the equipments fills up your available space.
The only question I had, was what pumps did you end up using. I couldn't find anything that wasn't smaller than 4w x 5l inches that would flow 600gph.
Now, if I could only migrate my 24ga saltwater to my 130ga freshwater tank. Too bad we are in a recession, I don't have any money!

 

[woody189]

Originally Posted by walloutlet
http:///forum/post/2941320
Woody,
Your in the exact same perdictament as I am. The problem I ran into with having a skimmer, pump for the skimmer (Aqua-C EV120 its 8 x 4 inches as well), return pump, bubble trap baffles it pretty much left me with 4l x 10w x 7h inches of space for a fuge. Essentially pointless IMO.
So what I ended up doing was just using the 10ga as a sump to basically heat the DT water, do water changes, water tests, etc... Then I just added a PVC T and a couple ball valves on the overflow and built a fuge in a separate container. I am lucky as the tank is against a wall, the other side of the wall is just a storage room so I ran the fuge lines into the storage room, lots of room there.
So I ended up having a 24ga DT, 10ga sump and a 30ga fuge. It's nice as it sits now I have 1.5 times the water for the display tank sitting in sump and fuge.
There is a 100 different ways you could attack this, it all depends on your space available. Something I am defintely learning more about, its amazing how much and quickly the equipments fills up your available space.
The only question I had, was what pumps did you end up using. I couldn't find anything that wasn't smaller than 4w x 5l inches that would flow 600gph.
Now, if I could only migrate my 24ga saltwater to my 130ga freshwater tank. Too bad we are in a recession, I don't have any money!

What I wound up doing is removing one of the baffles by the return so it's like a waterfall rather than flowing through the bottom.
I decided to hang the skimmer on back to save space. I don't have a lot room, but at least now I got a place to keep my skimmer and heaters, a place to absorb the bubbles, and a place for chaeto. Not to mention a few extra gallons (i'd say like 6 or 7).
The sump is running w/ chaeto, but I don't have the overflow working yet. I built it, but it leaked so i'm trying to fix that.
I'm trying to save money and use my little 300gph Powerhead, so I have to raise the sump up so there's less headloss.
IDk how it's gonna work yet, we'll see.

 

[walloutlet]

Keep us posted, I would be interested to know.
Thx.

 

[woody189]

Originally Posted by walloutlet
http:///forum/post/2945163
Keep us posted, I would be interested to know.
Thx.
I tried settin it up w/ the sump onthe floor, but the powerhead I was using as the return pump was too weak. I elevated the sump about 12 inches and now it's all good. I have the water coming from the overflow into the skimmer section. Then I have a 3 baffles, then teh fuge area. Then I have a single baffle separating the fuge from teh return pump area.
It's running pretty smoothly so far.

 

[woody189]

Originally Posted by walloutlet
http:///forum/post/2945163
Keep us posted, I would be interested to know.
Thx.
I wound up buying the Current Sunpod which is 2 X 150 MH's. i got it used for pretty cheap. i wanted to go w/ T5's, but this was a good deal so I took it.