Skeptical On High Flow Sump...

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Torqued

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I gotta say, one thing I remain skepitcal about is is the concept of a high flow sump. I find it very hard to believe that macro algae is going to remove nutrients from a fast moving water source quick enough to justify the need to run a 10x turnover sump. I have always subscribed to the concept of matching your return speed to the water volume that your skimmer can handle. In nearly all cases, your skimmer cant handle anywhere near 10x turnover. So if you are running 10x, you are probably only getting about 3x through your skimmer meaning that you are not returning fully skimmed water to the main tank. To add to that, not using a filter sock, I dont know how you can possibly get a nice polished/low particulate water. Im sorry, I just don't buy it.....Convince me otherwise :)

I will say, that I DO plan to run your sump configuration, albeit in two diff sumps. My main display tank will be 189g I plan to have a 40br as the fuge, it will be the first stage. The 40br will have an overflow into the first stage of a normal configured sump, with a standpipe section, then a filter sock section (so I have the option to run them if need be), then skimmer, then return section. Total I will have about a 110g between my two sumps, and I plan to use a Jebao 12000 return. However, because my sumps will be in my basement, there is now way I can reach anywhere near 10x turnover with that pump. More than likely be more in the neighborhood of 3-4x, which again, is what my Vertex Alpha 200 can handle.
 

Russ265

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water is homogeneous.
dwell time is one of the silliest things ive heard in this hobby and makes me shake my head everytime i see it come up.

my return is a 6250 gph on a 300 system.
 

NeptuneGarden

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water is homogeneous.

Yes, but your bio bacteria in your filter is not.

It does take dwell time for the bacteria in your filter or macro algae to react with compounds in the water before it goes zipping on by.
Why do you think the manufactures of reactors of all kinds tell you to slow flow down and give recommended max flow rates ?

It just depends on what you are using your sump for. Many reefers just use their sump as a place to house the skimmer and reactors to do mechanical filtration. In that kind of setup, then flow does not matter.
But if you are trying to create a refugium or live rock bio-filtration area in your sump, then yes you do need to slow down flow to get best results.
 

Russ265

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Yes, but your bio bacteria in your filter is not.

It does take dwell time for the bacteria in your filter or macro algae to react with compounds in the water before it goes zipping on by.
Why do you think the manufactures of reactors of all kinds tell you to slow flow down and give recommended max flow rates ?

It just depends on what you are using your sump for. Many reefers just use their sump as a place to house the skimmer and reactors to do mechanical filtration. In that kind of setup, then flow does not matter.
But if you are trying to create a refugium or live rock bio-filtration area in your sump, then yes you do need to slow down flow to get best results.

my filter is live rock. my biobacteria give me an ulns.
i have no skimmer.
even if i did, it doesnt make sense.

salt isnt homogeneous either. however...

picture yourself with a typical 900 gph return. you are standing over your sump with a cup of salt. and you pour that cup of salt in your sump to raise the salinity.

now picture me... i am over my sump with a 10,000 gph return and pour my cup of salt in.

if we had a skimmer that skimmed salt out, it would be at the same rate (barring our salt skimmers were the same rating) in that water.

in other words, our salinity would drop at the same rate.
 

d2mini

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But if you are trying to create a refugium or live rock bio-filtration area in your sump, then yes you do need to slow down flow to get best results.
That hasn't been my experience.
My previous system was high flow, around 10x, and the cheato ball in my fuge was a monster. N03 and P04 were always too low.
Of course there are always other variables but I had better results with this tank than I did with previous ones.
And I believe the idea behind the high flow in this case is to keep parameters between the display and the fuge as equal as possible.
 

Russ265

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That hasn't been my experience.
My previous system was high flow, around 10x, and the cheato ball in my fuge was a monster. N03 and P04 were always too low.
Of course there are always other variables but I had better results with this tank than I did with previous ones.
And I believe the idea behind the high flow in this case is to keep parameters between the display and the fuge as equal as possible.
+1

bingo
 

NeptuneGarden

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hmmmm, got me thinking, let me do some Googling today and see if I can find some real scientific data/research on the subject of bio-filters and dwell time........

I know it does matter to some extent ...... I think the question is how much does it matter with the size of scale systems we run and what efficiency differences are involved.
 
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twilliard

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Dennis is absolutely spot on.
My return through my 80g total volume system is a dc9000 pump at 100%
Consistency is key
 
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Im sorry, but I find it extremely hard to believe that in a system so small, with complete water turnover of 3-4x per hour that there is any significant difference.

The fact remains, you cannot argue that if you run 10x, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY your skimmer is skimming all the water that flows through the sump. The reality is it likely makes no difference IMHO. If you have low flow, that means the water coming out is cleaner, but its dilluting the dirtier water display water at a slower rate. If you run faster, you are definitely not cleaning the water quite as good (at least not skimming it all), but you are returning at a faster pace. Quite honestly, its 6 to one, half a dozen to another.... unless you can prove to me that macro is indeed able to pull ALL the nutrients out of 10x water flow, which I very very highly doubt, I dont subscribe to needing 10x flow. I think the key is to just have the nutrient export going on...period. So long as the low flow through the macro is not reducing your capacity to remove nutrients, then this is a non-issue.
 

twilliard

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The skimmer only processes what the pump will provide it regardless of how much flow is in the chamber. Unless the skimmer is directly plumbed to the overflow pipe.
I am thinking this needs to be in the equipment forum since this is more about skimmers than the triton process.
 

d2mini

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The higher flow should also help keep detritus from settling in the sump.

The skimmer thing.... in my brain, I have a hard time comprehending how flow through the sump makes ANY difference.
Let's say your total system volume is 200g. The tank and sump have that same 200g flowing through it. This doesn't change. It's not like new water is being introduced and old water expelled.
And regardless of flow, the skimmer body only holds X amount of water and pushes X amount of water through it's body at a constant rate.
AND, they say skimmer only remove what.... 20% of DOC's?
So I don't think 3x or 10x through the sump makes any measurable difference in skimmer performance. If anything, I'd think the higher flow rate would be more apt to get more of the high volume of water in the display down into the low volume of water in the sump. But of course that's all just a theory.
 

dgrigor02

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I too am in the camp that if 3X turnover or 10X turnover its pretty negligable difference in the overall nutrient levels of your water.

But for aggressively trying to grow algae thats where I do think it play a bigger role.

When Julian Sprung came to our club sometime around 2006 he mentioned something that did stick with me though, when you have algae in the tank where does it like to grow ? usually the rocks where the powerheads are blasting the most and right at the overflows. So while I don't think it matters much for the overall nutrient level in your tank ( the whole clean filtered vs. dirty debate ) but for most algaes they like lots of flow they have adapted to that that have a constant supply of dissolved nutrients when the levels are low.
 
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I too am in the camp that if 3X turnover or 10X turnover its pretty negligable difference in the overall nutrient levels of your water.

When Julian Sprung came to our club sometime around 2006 he mentioned something that did stick with me though, when you have algae in the tank where does it like to grow ? usually the rocks where the powerheads are blasting the most and right at the overflows. So while I don't think it matters much for the overall nutrient level in your tank ( the whole clean filtered vs. dirty debate ) but for most algaes they like lots of flow they have adapted to that that have a constant supply of dissolved nutrients when the levels are low.

This is an interesting observation...... I have to think on that a little, and I am not certain it proves this 10x hypothesis, but it is interesting....

As for algae on the overflow, that is the location of the highest concentration of nasties too....so that may explain why it grows there, but algae growing on powerheads where lots of flow is certainly interesting observation :). I wonder if placing a vortech or gyre pump in a fuge would accomplish the same thing without needing the huge flow THROUGH the sump....
 
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The skimmer only processes what the pump will provide it regardless of how much flow is in the chamber. Unless the skimmer is directly plumbed to the overflow pipe.
I am thinking this needs to be in the equipment forum since this is more about skimmers than the triton process.


This is about the triton sump design...and as much or more about the fuge as it is the skimmer.
 

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We are just talking opinions here so I will weigh in. In the use of biological filters contact time and surface area are factors that effect efficiency or conversion rate. You would notice this in a trickle filter system more than the current sump systems. So in the old days we would slow the turn over through the filter system to less than one turn per hour of tank volumn to up to four turns per hour. That seemed to be the sweet spot with the trickle system designs of the day. I would guess that would also effect the efficiency of a DSB as well. If you take a look at PaulB's reverse flow U.G. he is only turning about 150 gph. (it is hard to argue with his 40 plus years of success). Each system has a sweet spot and a reverse daylight system would benefit by paying attention to algea growth rates to find a sweet spot on flow.

It might be better to start out with a higher flow pump throttled back than to purchase two or three pumps looking for the sweet spot.

10 times per hour through the sump is not a necessity or impediment to success if the tank has great flow in the display. This is how the Tunze System works and it produced the best tank I ever owned with no sump at all...just the display. All the components were rail mounted back in the day and took up very little space compared to AIO's of today. We just need to pay attention to the livestock requirements for flow and oxygen content and the biological requirements of the filter systems we use.

In large scale store systems or wholesale holding systems the high flow rate is necessary to reduce individual pumps and electrical to each tank. As such we filtered the entire volume to the main sump and feed the correct rate to each Skimmer and biofilter and back to the main sump. The main pump or pumps were designed to provide more turnover to each tank via the valves in each cubicle. We also sized them to match the mechanical filter / chemical filter and U.V. to provide the higest kill rate for water born pathogens. This made for water that had at least been mechanically, chemically and U.V. filtered before returning to the display / holding systems. The concept worked great then and still will today. We need to tune each part of the system for maximum performance to enhance the whole. I think mechanical, chemical, and U.V. filtration in one pass would benefit many tank designs today. The new systems attempt some mechanical through filter socks or related but the other aspects seem to be to labor or cost intensive for many to pay attention to any more.
 

mcarroll

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I agree this may not be the best forum for this, but while we're at it...

Dwell Time
In a sealed system there are different concerns and limits.....dwell time is mostly irrelevant since the whole system is a small, finite volume of recycling water. It's 100% dwell time all the time.

Sump Flow
4x to 5x flow makes some logical sense (as others have pointed out) since it keeps your sump equipment (skimmers and such) well fed and account for most of the normal things that happen in a normal reef.

Beyond 4x-5x seems like a waste to me.

Propellor-based powerheads eliminated the need for anyone to get display flow from their sump return. (Tunze is celebrating one of the anniversaries of it this year in fact.)

This is good for us since getting flow by way of your return is expensive and inefficient - don't do it that way unless you "have to". I have trouble imagining anyone "having to" get their flow that way, but hey it's a big world. ;)

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zoomonster

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I know when I built this tank a couple years ago I already knew what I wanted for flow but got all sorts of recommendations in the 10x+ range. I've always said flow belongs in the tank from power heads rather than return. My target was 5x and that's about where it is today. You can argue all day over "proper" sump flow but to me its about preference and your specific setup.

This is a 200g tank and I'm running a 1585gph pump about 80% with 5ft head and don't have a problem with detritus buildup. But here again specific setup comes into play. I use filter socks which sit in the first chamber with a skimmer and yes I want some dwell time (less noise is good too). Water then flows through refugium section with sand, rock and chaeto (which thrives). Some dwell time there is of use and I don't want so much flow my pod population is being completely flushed out. Water then goes to the return chamber where it pumped through a manifold back to tank and to CaRx and a carbon/gfo reactor. So at least in my case 5x is more than adequate flow through a part of the tank that is effectively a water treatment system. Inside the tank there's MP40's to keep that water moving.
 

Bouncingsoul39

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"4x to 5x flow makes some logical sense (as others have pointed out) since it keeps your sump equipment (skimmers and such) well fed and account for most of the normal things that happen in a normal reef.

Beyond 4x-5x seems like a waste to me.

Propellor-based powerheads eliminated the need for anyone to get display flow from their sump return. (Tunze is celebrating one of the anniversaries of it this year in fact.)

This is good for us since getting flow by way of your return is expensive and inefficient - don't do it that way unless you "have to". I have trouble imagining anyone "having to" get their flow that way, but hey it's a big world."

This is the only logical answer to me. The Triton method of a high flow sump is unnecessary, inefficient, expensive and worst of all NOISY. I'd much rather have a nice quiet system that uses electricity and pumps efficiently than trying to squeeze out slightly better nutrient export based on something that is not empirically tested and backed by any real research.
 

Russ265

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so the debate of "how much turnover" will continue long after this thread dies imo.

the op mentioned something along the lines of dwell time which a skimmer doesnt care about.

many people are successful with 2x turnover. others 4-5x. others 20+. i dont think anyone will say you will be unsuccessful unless your turnover is 0.

i will say this though.... if the fish dont eat whats in my tank in 120 seconds, my return will.

is my set up better? course not. But lets not jump on the "it's a waste bandwagon" without fully comprehending what goes on.

my .02

i dont do triton btw. lol
 

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