sump questions

[blue steel]

I heard many stories of how I should purchase me a sump. What exactly is a sump? and what are the benifits? And what equipment must I buy for a sump. :help:

 

[gregvabch]

a "sump" is used for many purposes. i have a sump for my tank, and in it i have my heater, my protein skimmer, the pump and return line for my water chiller, bio balls, and my return pump. you use an overflow to bring the water down to the sump and a return pump to send the water back to the display tank. you can put all kinds of different stuff in a sump, or nothing at all. it is a good addition to a tank because it gives you more water, which at the least means more room for error. you can buy a sump, check ----, which is pre-manufactured. these are usually sold as combo's, which come with protein skimmers, bio balls, and return pumps. or you can build one out of plexiglass yourself, or even another fish tank. HTH

 

[blue steel]

thanks for the advice. But I have one more quesion. and that is what kind of pump is used to pump the water into and out of the sump? where did you purchase yours at.

 

[blue steel]

and what happens if the outlet pump stops to work will the inlet pump overfill the sump and spill water everywhere.

 

[gregvabch]

ok. to get the water down to the sump, you need an overflow. on my 55 gallon tank i have a cpr brand overflow that is rated at 600 gallons per hour. the overflow siphons the water out of the tank and then down to the sump. it does not use a pump, just gravity. my return pump is a mag 7 brand pump. with a few feet of hose it has to push the water through to get back to my tank it runs pretty good, (balanced). the farther the pump has to push water up, the less gallons per hour it pumps water. it is very possible to spill water. but, there are ways to control it. if your return pump stops pumping water, the overflow will only supply the amount of water that it takes for your waterline to go below the lip of your overflow. the overflow hangs on the back of your tank like a backpack filter. if your overflow stops working, your return pump will keep pumping water into your tank until the water level in the sump is too low. in my opinion this is why you don't want your sump to be too big in relation to the size of your tank. another scenario is if your power goes out. depending on how your return pump supplies your water back into your tank, it could create a reverse siphon. meaning, it will start sucking water out of your tank instead of supplying it. to combat this you can use a spray bar to supply the water back to your tank from the sump, or drill a hole in your return tubing right around the water level so that once the water goes below that hole it supplies an airway to the hose which will break the siphon and stop the flow of water. hope this helps and does not confuse you more.