Steve Tyree Zonal Sump (~100 gals)

[jzw]

just sharing a new sump build, adding into an existing 600 gal system (400 plumbed into a 200). made this sump in accordance with steve tyree's CMAT 1 & 2 ebooks.

because we currently only have about 200 lbs of live rock, and an undersized sump with only brightwell and marine pure plus skimmer - basically a sparse 'modern' tank. i thought this would be a good project to try.

we do have an existing cheato/culurpa section in the 200 gal portion of our display (with only a tiny bit of each), which i am thinking of removing at some point. our lower flow/lower light 200 gal had tons of feather dusters, which got nuked within days of my sis adding a copperband lol.

we run bare-bottom, and i've noticed when i clean out the detrius, our nitrate and phosphate levels immediately take a dive, from 2 or 3 ppm no3 - to 1 to zero, and .04 or .06 - to zero, respectively. so i'm thinking steve tyree's zonal sump system is perfect to add, both in terms of bio-diversity and a nutrient sink (since i'm planning on never touching it). regarding the sudden buffet disappearance of feather dusters, 5 of our 20+ lyetails came down with 'the flu' and passed away. i'm thinking it had something to do with a baterial increase, given this immediately followed the nuking of 100's of feather dusters.

current total water movement in our mixed 400 gal ranges from 40 to 80x, and about 30x in our 200.

i'll upload a video describing the sump shortly.

 

[CC13]

i'll upload a video describing the sump shortly.

I wanna see this thing!

 

[jzw]

 

[jzw]

here's the flow rate calculator i used:

https://www.sensorsone.com/volume-flow-and-area-to-flow-velocity-calculator/


if anyone has experience or thoughts on this zonal topic, please share

 

[User]

I’m doing a blacked out 29 gallon as a full cryptic zone as part of my sump in the fishroom, and understood that minimal flow is best. I was planning 3x and am surprised to see you are doing 30x.

I’ll admit I haven’t read those books but I did just put my intended numbers through the calculator you linked and got 0.045cm/second. Yes, that’s 0.45mm/second. Cross sectional area perpendicular to the direction of flow (bottom to top) for a 29g is (12”x30”) is 360 inches/sq. And my flow volume was 100 gallon/hour. So I’m guessing I need to work on my definition of ‘slow’ and ‘minimal’... to get it up to 3cm/s (right around where you are at) I’d have to boost flow up to 6600 gph!! So I’m not sure exactly where I’m screwing up some pretty simple math, but that can’t be right.

Water goes in top via 1/2” pvc, down to the bottom and comes out a perforated pvc pipe. Water flows upwards and out of a 1.5” bulkhead into my fuge section of the main 125g sump.

The tank will have 5-6 eggcrate platforms and will be seeded with a sponge pack from tybee’s website.

 

[jzw]

@neilp2006, looks nice ;Cat ;Doctor actually, more like awesome!

yea, my projected flow's prolly too high, but i'm using a dc adjustable pump i did do my flow velocity calcs based on 1000 gph, but had to calc sans rock.

i would just list the different zonal flow velocities for everyone, but then everyone would just shortcut and not read the tyree books... and not fair for mr tyree.

as flow velocity correlates directly to available area - there's no easy way to calculate the space taken up by rock, and obtain the empty interstitial spaces. i half-hartedly tried, but took a brain face plant when i saw this https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0040195188901400. lols!

any math wizs here? haha

so i just looked at a pile of my live rock and guessitmated 25 to 15% of space for flow remains, assuming i stacked rock up to the surface - so maybe dial down gph by a corresponding 75 to 85%... we'll see. @ReefTeacher, you think that's close? this project is reef geek heaven lols

tyree, in one of his books, said to place a ruler up againt the glass, watch the particles, and approximate flow velocity that way.

 

[User]

Understand about the ebooks. I agree totally.

I wasn’t planning on much rock, mainly eggcrate for colonization. Which means my cross-section is probably close to the total area of 360.

Uugghh. I tried to wing it based on ‘slow’ and now I think i an way under and am at ‘dead calm’...

I’ll see how much the 1/2” inch will flow on my manifold and check what my flow rate is visually with a ruler.

However, if I really do need anywhere close to what the math predicts- I’m going to have to run it off a new pump. I only have about 200gph spare on my manifold, and budgeted 100gph ofthat for the cryptic. I have to contend with 20 feet of head pressure for the main return and also feeding a fuge at 400gph (10x) .

An experiment may be in order this weekend.

 

[jzw]

haha let us know! maybe you'll be going from egg crate to rock!

as an aside, before our copperband arrived, and all the feather dusters were around, they never grew on our egg crate separation barriers - they only heavily populated the live rock. hmmm....

another aside, i initially thought of making baffles covered in rubble, to enable a more accurate calc of velocity, and to max out habitable surface area, and place them in horizontal or vertical rows, like a row of books with every other book taken out - just like your eggcrate layout - but then what the heck, glue hundreds of pieces of rubble onto both sides of panes??? and have them fall off over time? beyond crazy!

 

[jzw]

@neilp2006 any updates? i plumbed ours into our system last week... and it's running. the cryptic area flow is so SLOW, omg. i think i'll need to put a bubbler inside the cryptic area, just to break up the surface tension.

 

[User]

@neilp2006 any updates? i plumbed ours into our system last week... and it's running. the cryptic area flow is so SLOW, omg. i think i'll need to put a bubbler inside the cryptic area, just to break up the surface tension.

I’ve been working on getting the main system going, and catching up with sleep in the spare time I find- I have a 5 week old and a 2 year old, so time is tight

Will update once I get it running.

 

[jzw]

we ended up putting an old koralla in the fully cryptic, at the surface. flow rate is now technically wrong, but i think better than an oil slick on top

we have some white/beigh sponges and a few feather dusters that've 'spontaneously generated' in the semi-cryptic area now... nothing visible in the fully cryptic area yet.

 

[Subsea]

@jzw
I converted 25 year old 30G EcoSystem mud/macro refugium into a cryptic refugium one year ago. I have Tyree’s ebooks, but did not subscribe to slow flow rates. In fact, I have cryptic sponges in my canister filter that is on this system. In the refugium, cryptic sponges seemed to proliferate at top level of rocks. From my oberservations, I would not use rock in the future because it impedes circulation. For my money, eggcrate perpendicular to flow is ideal.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/2...m-on-top-with-30g-ecosystem-mud-macro.421526/

 

[reefwiser]

This will make your system more stable for sure.

 

[User]

we ended up putting an old koralla in the fully cryptic, at the surface. flow rate is now technically wrong, but i think better than an oil slick on top

we have some white/beigh sponges and a few feather dusters that've 'spontaneously generated' in the semi-cryptic area now... nothing visible in the fully cryptic area yet.

Any updates? Anything growing in your full cryptic?

And you said the flow is really slow? Can you approximate the velocity using the ruler technique?

I am planning to bring my cryptic online really soon but think my planned 100gph/360 sq in is way too slow, but haven’t had time to experiment

Thanks

 

[jzw]

@neilp2006

found some time to do this, will post a video, easier... the suggested flow seems sOOOO sLooooow

but overall very satisfied

 

[jzw]

@neilp2006 you're gonna need a separate pump, pretty sure - we have 1000 gph in there

 

[User]

Thanks for the video. Good stuff. You definitely have slow flow.

I just don’t understand how slow is 1000gph though. I get that it’s tied into cross sectional area and flow rate, but the calculators are putting my required flow at over 6000 gph for a 29g tank flowing bottom to top

That feels ridiculously fast to me, but I guess I can only really figure it out with some experimentation.

I have a 1500gph on my mixing barrel, and the mixing action is vertical, and it’s enough flow to dissolve a full bag of salt in 3-4 minutes. 6000gph on an area of comparable size seems nuts

I’m just brain-dumping here— just trying to reconcile the numbers with expectations.

Maybe I’ll patch in my two available pumps — the 1500, and a 400 gph reactor pump— to see what’s up

Thanks again for the videos!

 

[ectoaesthetics]

Thanks for posting this. I feel like there is not enough discussion about cryptic zones. Would really love to see more folks out there doing them just to see how tanks preform with them. I often wonder if the sponges under our rocks is what causes our tanks to "become more stable" at around the year mark. As that also seems to be around the time I have a bunch of sponge under my rocks as well.

 

[CNDReef]

It could be, sponges do suck up silicates and metals. Definitely a topic that isn’t discussed and probably should be a staple of a “mature “ system

 

[garbled]

I'm actually planning a small cryptic bucket on my tank. It won't be much, but I was a big fan of his book. (I even have it in print form)