Hi all, I'm upgrading my 10 gallon diy sump with a 15 gallon and am currently working on the design.
Take a look, what do you think? Any improvements or recommendations?
From left to right, the chambers:
I'm considering a few things,
My biggest problems with the current sump:
Materials:
Newhouse Lighting UFO blue/red grow light ~27 watts,
Zoomed deep dome housing (8.5" diameter footprint)
Current skimmer:
Bubble Magus QQ2
Take a look, what do you think? Any improvements or recommendations?
From left to right, the chambers:
- Return chamber,
- Skimmer/chemical chamber (5" estimated width)
- Bio + mechanical chamber (5" x 9" estimated footprint)
- Refugium/intake chamber (2 bulk heads as indicated)
I'm considering a few things,
- Eject the bio chamber so the mechanical chamber extends fully to the bottom of sump. This would allow filter socks as an option. It would somewhat complicate the skimmer/chemical chamber flow.
- Extend mechanical/bio chamber fully glass-to-glass which forces the heater to be mounted diagonally instead of flat on the sump bottom.
My biggest problems with the current sump:
- light spillover from refugium causing excess algae growth
- backflow from return pump, upon shut down, gets too high.
- excessively high refugium chamber water level
- sump chamber too small for future skimmer upgrades (3.5" currently), but I am not sure if 5" or 6" is going to be necessary for this new sump. I'll probably have at most a 60 gallon cube as a display, so I'm thinking there are a lot of 5" width skimmers that can fit.
Materials:
- 15 gallon Aqueon tank (internal dimensions are 23.5" x 11.75" x 11.5").
- HD white eggcrate (plastolite)
- Lexan sheet (polycarbonate I believe)
- Foam PVC
- K1 Evolution media (1 litre) for biofiltration
Newhouse Lighting UFO blue/red grow light ~27 watts,
Zoomed deep dome housing (8.5" diameter footprint)
Current skimmer:
Bubble Magus QQ2