Sump/Pump question

[christerrell2k3]

Well, the last 3 days my tank has been ice cold, never have to even worry about heaters cause my room is ice cold, concrete stained floor, and room right by the a/c :) but it seems that my noobness has hit me once again. The pump that is in the sump heated the water up finally, to a point where im not even having it plugged in, so now im left to do an external pump from the sump... I have a 20gal glass tank being used as the sump... so im guessing my alternative is to drill the glass... but is there anything else i could do? Or am i going to have to rip up the plumbing and set up some other sorts of config?

Guess i could always buy another huge tub and slap a bulkhead on it, but again ripping up the pvc @&#%*$ angers me.. haha

Thanks in advance,
Chris Terrell

[GaryP]

You don't have to drill the sump to use an external pump. I didn't. I just used PVC and a couple of elbows to loop over the top of the sump and connected it to the suction side of the pump. You can even use tygon tubing to get away from the elbows if you have some way to anchor the tygon where you want it in the sump. A chunk of live rock and some wire ties comes to mind as one possible solution.

[dow]

Here's an article about a closed loop that uses a pvc siphon arrangement. This guy is really good at designing things like this. He uses his on a closed loop, but you could certainly use it for a return pump.

http://www.melevsreef.com/closedloop.html

[christerrell2k3]

Sweet, thanks for all the help

[StephenA]

Or you could buy a new sump.