20L Sump Design - Comments/Assistance

[lhoy]

During PetCo's sale I bought a 20 gallon long to use for a sump under my 55 gallon DAS tank which I gutted the built-in filter. Here is a drawing and my comments below:



Here are my questions:

1.) Should I use acrylic or glass baffles? If I use acrylic, what width (3/4"?), and would rough sanding the sides help silicon adhere to it?

2.) Are the height of my baffles between the skimmer/drain section and the return area okay?

3.) I will feed the refugium from a T off of the return line. With 1" teeth on the refugium baffle, is that enough for reasonable draining from refugium back to return area given the height of the other baffles?

4.) Does it appear that the sizes of the three areas are sufficient? I will probably use an Aqua C Remora or Urchin for a skimmer.

Thanks for your help.

Lee

[Ed]

1) I would use glass for the baffles. Glass to glass bonds better than acrylic to glass. The pieces of glass will be cheaper also.

2) Not sure where your drain will be. Some designs raise the 'a' and 'c' pieces and inch or two off the bottom so that water goes under 'a' over the shorter 'b' and under 'c' for bubble reduction.

3) Sounds reasonable to me.

4) If your skimmer and return pump fit comfortably in their respective areas and you have easy access to them it should be fine.

Just my thoughts. HTH.

Ed

[hobogato]

you can use acrylic baffles, and they will hold fine with silicone, just make sure that the two that hold pressure (b and d) are siliconed on both sides. im not sure why you want teeth on the refugium baffle, it just amounts to more to clean algae off of later.

two issues you may have - evaporation may drop the level of water in your return section pretty fast, so you may have to add topoff water pretty often if you arent running an auto-topoff of some kind and there may not be enough room at the top of the sump/fuge for the excess drain water from your display if the return pump stops for any reason (like a power outage).

[matt]

This is a very similar design to several sump/refugiums I've built over the years. It will work fine, but due to the size (it's small) you won't be able to push more than 5-600 gph through it without some serious microbubbles. As far as drainage goes, just get a clear idea of how much your tank drains when you turn the return pump off and make sure there's enough room. You want to do this before you put in the baffles, so you can calculate/guess how much room to leave above the baffles for tank draining. You can also figure this into the determining the level you run your return area at, but ideally you want that area fairly deep, it helps with bubbles, and as Ace said, all your evaporation takes place there so you don;t want to run your pump dry. Submersible return pump, right?

Glass will work better than acrylic with silicone. Lots of people have used silicone for stuff like this, but it's never a strong bond. Depending on the level in your return area, the refugium baffle could have a fair amount of pressure on it at times. It's up to you, but if it were me I'd use glass. If you really want to use acrylic, 1/4" is okay and sanding will help the silicone grab. It still won't bond. You might consider using dark glass or acrylic on the refugium baffle if you're going to have light in there; it will help slow the algae growth in your return area.

I have an urchin pro for sale if you want it. The regular size urchin is amost useless on a tank over 30 gallons IMO.

[OldSalty]

Sorry, but a fuge that small wont be very effective, if at all. I'd try and make it bigger if ya can.