Wijic
Community Member
Hey all!
I have my glass sump put together and I'm just trying to silicon up a couple tiny leaks in the first baffle of the bubble trap (this is the fifth attempt, silicon is smeared all over, nrgh... does a razor blade work well to scrape silicon off glass if I need to start over?) and then I'll be ready to plumb the sump.
My sump is a 30 gallon long that will be living inside the stand beneath my 75 gallon display tank. The 75 isn't reef ready, so I got an Eshopps overflow for up to 200 gallons/900 gph. It has two bulkheads, which works well because my sump has the skimmer on the left, the refugium on the right and the return chamber in the middle (it's one of melev's designs).
My questions are:
1) When plumbing, is there a big difference in using PVC piping versus flexible tubing, and which would you recommend and why?
2) If I want about 75% of the water flowing down into the skimmer chamber and about 25% flowing into the fuge, how do I manage that? Ball valve? Gate valve? Something else?
3) If I decide to just use one bulkhead for the overflow and split the return pipe with an offshooting pipe that pours some return water down into the fuge, how do I seal off the other overflow bulkhead?
4) If I drill a siphon-break hole into my return pipe just below the water level in the display tank, should I still have a check valve on the return pipe as well?
Thanks for your input!
I have my glass sump put together and I'm just trying to silicon up a couple tiny leaks in the first baffle of the bubble trap (this is the fifth attempt, silicon is smeared all over, nrgh... does a razor blade work well to scrape silicon off glass if I need to start over?) and then I'll be ready to plumb the sump.
My sump is a 30 gallon long that will be living inside the stand beneath my 75 gallon display tank. The 75 isn't reef ready, so I got an Eshopps overflow for up to 200 gallons/900 gph. It has two bulkheads, which works well because my sump has the skimmer on the left, the refugium on the right and the return chamber in the middle (it's one of melev's designs).
My questions are:
1) When plumbing, is there a big difference in using PVC piping versus flexible tubing, and which would you recommend and why?
2) If I want about 75% of the water flowing down into the skimmer chamber and about 25% flowing into the fuge, how do I manage that? Ball valve? Gate valve? Something else?
3) If I decide to just use one bulkhead for the overflow and split the return pipe with an offshooting pipe that pours some return water down into the fuge, how do I seal off the other overflow bulkhead?
4) If I drill a siphon-break hole into my return pipe just below the water level in the display tank, should I still have a check valve on the return pipe as well?
Thanks for your input!
