Building a new larger sump, need advice!

[motortrendz]

So I started this in my build thread, but figured it might get more views if I made a separate thread.

So my tank is a 80-90ish gallon tank(I have no idea actually as ove never seen this tank before. Looks like a 92 bow corner but the back is flat not a point) and in the stand I have a 20g long as my DIY sump. Its tight, cramped and I cant get to anything. In my basement (unfinished) below the tank is plenty of room to install my new sump. I actually have my rodi and my calcium reactor down there now.. I installed a sink and a marine grade ejection pump to my sewer line so the salt water wont kill the internals when doing water changes.

I am putting in a 20amp dedicated line for the new sump and I also made a delay circuit for my skimmer incase of power failure the skimmer will have a 2min delay startup to allow the sump to get back to normal operational levels so the skimmer wont overflow when the power comes back on. I also have a batter back up for my powerheads in my tank that will be wired up as well.

Lastly I'll be plumbing in a 24x24x10 frag tank in the basement as well for my frag collection addiction bc my tank is too full. Lol. (If that's really a thing)

So onto my new sump.. my sump is made from a 75 gallon acrylic tank o acquired for free, that someone already used as a sump but did a terrible job sealing it. Every chamber was glued with weldon and then where they cut it short was filled with silicone(that didnt hold obvioulsy) so I broke out all the old chambers and replaced them with new cut panels. My first chamber is open, with an under over into the skimmer section. Which is 8in tall, and 16.5x 17, my diablo 200 skimmer will be in here and the footprint is 12x10ish. So the back half of this chamber will be filled with marine pure bricks (6)to add to the bio filtration. Then it goes through a foam polishing pad and through an under over into the return chamber which will house my m2 ecotech pump and my auto top off setup from autotopoff.com. the far right chamber is my water change chamber it holds 15 gallons of water the low valve will be plumbed directly to my sump pit for the ejection pump. The feed line will be coming off my manifold. So to do a water change all I need to do is turn off the manifold valve and then open the low valve. Once done close the drain and refill with fresh saltwater and turn the manifold valve back on. should be the easiest cleanest and fastest water changes I've ever done.
This sump should hold about 35 gallons of water which is about 3x what the old sump held.

Onto my question, not sure what to do in the first chamber, I'm not a big filter sock guy, I do use them in my current sump but only when I notice alot of floating particulates in my water column. Usually 5 out of 6 weeks I dont have the socks in... so someoneone recommended a filter floss roller unit.. never used one and I hear mixed reviews on them and how they actually clean the water too much, currently my nitrates are about 4 and po4 is about .08-.10( and I run no gfo) I do carbon dose and add bacteria regularly) my skimmer is definitly a beast and rated for more than double my tank size but I do run a heavy stocked tank and feed heavily as well. I am planning on running a coarse blue filter pad and a black fine filter foam before the skimmer to try and catch large particulates and also a black foam block after the skimmer to catch anything left before it goes back to the return.

Let me know what you guys think, should I add something to the first chamber? Change anything within the sump? Any an all ideas welcome. I like getting other point of views that maybe I missed.

Heses a bunch of pics of the area it's going in and the sump itself. Thanks for looking and thank you for any feedback...

 

[motortrendz]

Mayne I posted In the wrong section? Ttt maybe someone will see it now
...

 

[ScubaDan206]

Nice. I would recommend gate valves in place of the ball valves. Either one will work, but the gate valve will allow for finer adjustments.

 

[motortrendz]

True. I thought of that afterwards. I've run ball valves on the last 2 manifolds and haven't hand any issued until lately on one valve, it sticks. But that's y I got the union valves soon could replace if needed. The cost of ball valves compared to gate valves is about 25% of the cost.

 

[motortrendz]

I recently replaced my dumps return pump with an M2 pump bc my old dc pump failed. My hope was to use this pump as my return when I move the sump to my basement. Has anyone used this? I read they have a 21ft head pressure, I'll be using no where near that. My sump will be on a stand in the basement so itll be about 4ft from the ceiling(I only have a 6ft tall unfinished basement.) And then its 5ft to the return port on my tank... so a total of about 9ft head height. I'm looking to get about 600gph at the tank
.. is this doable?
@ReefSquad maybe you guys would know.
Thanks.

 

[foxt]

You can use the pump's performance curve to decide if it will work for you. First, you need to do a head loss calculation. It is not quite as simple as just using the total vertical drop, you do need to factor in the overall pipe length, pipe diameter, # elbows, valves, etc. You can play with an online calculator like this one to check it out: http://www.freecalc.com/fric.htm

From the M2's performance curve to get to 600gph you can have as much as 12-13 ft of head loss, so after taking out the 9ft of vertical drop, you have 3-4ft of head to play with.

 

[motortrendz]

Gotcha. It's going to be directly below the tank so maybe 1- 2 ft of vertical. I was gonna run my tractor manifold off of it as well. But I think I may be asking too much...

 

[foxt]

Ah, so no longer looking at the sump in the basement?

 

[motortrendz]

I meant horizontal. Lol. Yes definitely doing it in the basement. But directly below the tank on the first floor.

 

[foxt]

I meant horizontal. Lol. Yes definitely doing it in the basement. But directly below the tank on the first floor.

Do the calculations - you may be surprised how much head a 90 elbow can add, or how much difference there is between 1" pipe and 1.25" pipe.

 

[motortrendz]

So o got my sump finally built and layed out the way I liked. And I set up a frag tank with it...

Dumb question.... I put coarse sand and crushed coral in the bottom of the frag tank... should I fill it with water and cycle it? It just adding it to my existing system with a dose of bacteria would be ok??