It doesn't have to exactly matched. As I stated in the example above...

If the return pump is too strong, the extra water the skimmer can't handle will bypass the skimmer and go over the glass partition to the second zone. If the return pump is too weak, the extra water processed by the protein skimmer will overflow backwards over the glass partition back into the on deck circle for the skimmer. Both scenarios are less than perfect but what is :)

Ok, if you read that it is not an efficiency, it is how much it will remove in 24 hours.. an eficiency would be how much it would remove in one volume change of the skimmer, which is what this discussion is about having a flow rate matched to your skimmer. so if my skimmer had a flow rate of 600gph, I would call the efficiency the amount of crap removed from 10gal of water in 1 min, a power efficiency would be how much is removed compared to the power input.

so ya the 80 and 20%s have nothing to do with what we are talking about really.

Steve

give me a break, there are tones of books out there that say you want over 20X flow rate. just because some one writs a book doesn't mean it is right, it may work for him, it ma be how he feels, but that is it. as for being a rocket scientest whopity doo.. I am an Marine Engineer, he my direct line of work deals with water flow and movment, but does it mean I know about turf scrubbers... hell no never even seen one, but I di know alot of people have to low of flow on them also (I have been reading about them) but I do know water flow and pumps, and heaters, and well anything else that is mechanical with out tanks. hmm maybe I should write a book now that I am retired.

Steve

ok, not exactly but implied now that I read it again. by sayign skimm it 100% while you are talkign about the lower flow you are saying that the skimmer is 100% or close to it efficient.

Steve

Then by your own words, is NOT a FIFO. can not have extra, or recirculating water for a FIFO style sump

For a FIFO, All water that enters sump, needs to pass through the skimmer ONCE, then on through the rest of the system ONCE, then back to tank. NO bypass, and no water recircing in loops. Everything is in series.

recirc skimmer are usaly fed slow Dan, it would work but not sure if it would be any better.

Steve

So how would you rate the efficiency of the following example...

You have a protein skimmer that requires a 600 GPH feed. You feed said skimmer 600 gallons of display tank water every hour with no bypass in the sump and without allowing the skimmer to process water twice before it is returned to the display tank.

No one in this thread claimed that is 100% efficacy, but since you are broaching the subject, how efficient do you consider that configuration to be?

The thread isn't about protein skimmer limitations. It's about making the operation of the equipment you have run efficiently.

Let me guess, you haven't even read the book :)

So based on the book you read, you are discounting P.R. Escobal's mathematical formulas. Please post your references so we can compare the math. If the author of the book you read had a breakthrough that challenges the industry standards that Escobal has set, then I would love to see how they came to a different conclusion.

I know, hence the needing slow sump flow, or a REALLY large skimmer that would be so costly as to make the FIFO design not that appealing.


But really, in a sump with your skimmer, how much water is being recirced by a regular one pass skimmer in a sump chamber? Sure, you match sump flow to skimmer flow, but there is allways skimmer outlet water that will be sucked back into the inlet. Only true way to ensure that doesnt happen is to feed skimmer from different compartment.

That scenario will be as efficient as the Skimmer manufactures designed it to be.

MrOm's comment makes perfect sense to me and I can't see how he infers anything about the efficiency of the actual protein skimming device.

I don't know why you keep trying to change the focus of the thread, which is throughput for a sump.

If you stop at a gas station and fill your tank to the top with 50 litres of gas, then proceed to overflow another 950 litres of gas (20 x the amount needed) on the ground, where does that rate on the efficiency meter? Would you do this if you read it in a book? Would you reconsider the practice if someone offered you irrefutable proof that it isn't necessary?

I agree that the most efficient skimmer feeding system is a direct feed from the display drain, but most protein skimmers are built by manufacturers to cut production costs, so they use a one pump does all system.

If you are directly feeding a recirculating skimmer from a drain, you should always have an emergency bypass T or Y in the event that the skimmer clogs, can't keep up with the sump return pump, or a surge of water in the tank while you are servicing it. In the event that any water takes the T or Y, the system is no longer FIFO or 100% efficient as MrOm would say :)

With a little valve tweaking you can get close enough to a perfect match with the sump & skimmer pumps to call it "efficient". The good thing about directing the skimmer effluent over a glass partition and trying to match the pump outputs is if you don't get a perfect match, the system is se;f regulating, in that you don't have a skimmer zone that runs dry when the skimmer pump outcompetes, or an overflowing skimmer if the return pump outcompetes.

As bandit pointed out, our goal here is to move water from the display tank to the sump and back for the purpose of filtration. If the filtration only requires a slow throughput, then that's all we need to give it.

If your recirculating skimmer needs 300 GPH throughput, it doesn't matter how big your tank is, you need to install a sump return pump that delivers 300 GPh to the display and subsequent sump/skimmer.

Just like i said match your flow with your equipment.

As I stated in an earlier post, the Sicce PSK 2500 pump used on many skimmers has a maximum output of 660 GPH. I would suspect less than that with the high range of air to water ratio that pump offers. Another very popular skimmer pump is the Laguna Max-Flo which puts out 450 GPH in most cases. These are pumps that you will see on high end skimmers that are rated for tanks up to 300 gallons.

A magic number like 10 or 20 x the volume of the tank turnover has absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand when the protein skimmer used is the same for a 75 or 300 gallon tank. The display/sump throughput should be 500 GPH which is equal to 6.6666 x for the former and 1.6666 for the latter.

I would suggest you use a bucket and stopwatch to meter the exact output of the skimmer once it is broken in and running at maximum efficiency with respect to air intake/production. Only then will you have hard numbers of skimmer pump water flow rates.

Some of the large Beckett skimmers require a very strong feed pump, but these are typically plumbed right into the display tank with an influent at one end and the effluent at the other. They may be sitting in a sump or catch basin, but they are usually plumbed independent of them.

Ok this whole thing is bing made a lot more complacated that it has to be. let me try clarafy and put an end to the back and forth which is getting no where and just confusing people reading this.

Ok so I will put forth 2 senarios for you to read and tell me which one works better all equipment is the same so tank is 80 gal sump is 30 gal, skimmer is fed by a 500gph pump

so senario 1, lets match the skimmer so the return flow is 500 gal per hour

Senario 2, lets use a bigger return pump so the flow is 1500 gph.

and heck let throw one more in
senario 3 lets match the tank, flow rate is 30 gal per hour.

so in senarios 1+2 the skimmer is given all the water it can handle but yet in senario 3 you are starving the skimmer.

so lets pick a number and say that this skimmer is 20% efficient (picked 20 as it is easier to work with) which means in 1 hour this skimmer will reduce the "crap" in 500gal of water by 20%

so our total water volume in these systems is the same at 100gal

system 1 the skimmer has all the water it can handle so it reduces the waist to it theoretical maximum reduction. as per the article Mr Wilson poster that is about a 80% removal.

in system number 2, the exact same amount of water is processed, so you get the same results as system 1.

but in system 3 where we matched the tank size for a 1X turnover, the skimmer only sees 80gal in that hour, but since it skimms the hell out of that 80 gal it is reduced to the max pull down so 80% clean 20% dirty then mixed with the 100% dirty water in the display so 80 gal at 20% mixed with 20 gal at 100% is going to give you about a 35% dirty mixture as aposed to the 20% from the first 2. so you can see if we matched the sump flow for a 1X turn over it would be even worse as we would have 20 gal of 80% clean water mixing with 80 gal of 100% dirty, which would end up with a number of 84% dirty.

So what do we get from this, not enough flow is very bad, to much flow works good but isn't efficient in power used for moving the water.

heaters will work just as good in high flow as in low flow but they transfer more heat to a perticular sample of water in a lower flow, but in a closed system where we have constant cirulation the end result will be the same. and to low a flow can cause heat gradiants which you don't want. as for UV this is a hard one as you have to match the flow written on the UV unit.. mine wanter 400 to 550 gph so I gave it a 550gph pump and knew there would be between 50 and 100gph of losses, chiller same thing match the flow rating.

so the way I had my tank set up I created massive amounts of flow in the display to keep everythign suspended. my surface was very turbulant so I never developed bio film that needed to be skimmed off the surface. but I still used a smooth overflow to reduce noise and I had the water flowing over it at a depth of about 1/4" so I would have enough water flow to carry suspended junk to the sump.

from the sump I had one pump tt remove water for my skimmer, this sucked from my settling pond and returned at the return pump chamber, my heaters were located in the settleing pond where the flow was a little lower. I had two pumps pull water out of the return pump chamber and send it to the chiller and the UV then return at the very bigining again to help keep the flow in the bigining section very fast and turbulant so any suspended matter wouldn't fall out befor the settling pond.

the result of this system was very very little cleaning of crap from the bottom of the desplay, but lots from the settling pond which is what I wanted. I would shut down the return pump, skimmer pump and UV pump, suck all the water from the settling area (about 20) then put my new salt water in there and water change and clean up was done. I don't like refuge, algae or anything else in the sump, as they do need a low flow, so I had my refuge remote and I pumped water to it and it trickeled back into the display directly.

Steve

I really don't see how that simplified matters.

In example one we have high efficiency.

In example two we have a waste of resources (extra drain noise, additional plumbing, more expensive pump, saltcreep, microbubbles, added heat and noise from larger pump etc. etc.). There is a lot more to it than "to much flow works good but isn't efficient in power used for moving the water." Protein skimmers are designed to maintain bubble stability long enough to deliver the "bad stuff" to the collection cup. Once you lower salinity, add ozone, or decrease the concentration of "bad stuff" you compromise the stability with a net result of premature bubble merging and popping (wet foam). This is why protein skimmer must be sized correctly for the tank and subsequent bioload it is intended for. Installing an oversized skimmer on a tank will often result in poor foam development.

In example three we are giving the skimmer a deficit of "dirty" water, and falling short of the manufacturer's feed requirements. Whatever the shortfall is, will be your rate of inefficiency. Unless you are prepared to challenge the skimmer manufacturer's recommended feed amount for a slower feed, you have a net loss of efficiency. Extra passes through the skimmer with the same effluent water that has just been skimmed is not the same as increasing contact time and does not "skim the hell out of the water".

Your math is incorrect in scenario three as well. The skimmer is fed new "dirty" water at a rate of 80 gallons per hour. Providing you agree that a FIFO system is the most efficient, some of that water will be processed once, while other molecules will be processed many times. There is actually a formula for this in Escobal's book that you disagree with.

How can you assume that you are getting "max pulldown" by reskimming the same water over and over at that unknown rate. Based on a feed of 80 GPH and skimmer pump output of 500 GPH, the water will pass through the protein skimmer 6.25 times per hour, providing your design incorporates a way of telling how many times each molecule has travelled through the skimmer before returning to the display :) A FIFO design can assure that all 80 GPH passes through once, but after that it's entirely random.

Heaters rarely come on in reef tanks, but I still install them nonetheless. Debating their maximum efficiency at the cost of the other equipment you will actually use on a daily basis is moot. There is a difference between manufacturer's directions and scientific formulas for zap rates. If you want efficiency, then use Escobal's formula. Here is a simplified version you can follow. http://www.aquariumadvice.com/articl...ers/Page1.html
A typical 25 watt UV sterilizer works most efficiently at 80 GPH throughput.

Proteins are polar, with one end being hydrophilic (attracted to water/repelled by air) and the other hydrophobic (repelled by water/attracted to air). Protein constantly switch polarity back and forth, so when we collect surface water it is always rich in hydrophobic proteins, or surfactants (surface active agents).

Chaetomorpha and Gracilaria do very well under high flow rates, but it isn't a requirement.

I don't understand why you wanted high flow in your sump? I like the idea of a settling chamber, but it should be slow moving and at the base of the first zone (skimmer/settling/mechanical filtration). Also why not use one pump for the chiller and UV unit? By returning these effluents (UV & chiller) to the beginning of your sump, you are irradiating the water two or more times, and getting a heat gain by not sending the chilled water directly to the tank. It looks like your system is a "water juggler" with a lot of resources expended to complete a simple task. By you description, your sump served two purposes 1) House the protein skimmer. 2) House a settling chamber. The rest of the equipment you mentioned is either a header tank or inline. Why not put the skimmer in the refugium header tank?

Whenever I see this statement written it always means the same thing. you simply do not believe it and your way is the best way and you cannot prove it, you have been offered a number of alternatives with proof yet you want us to believe you rather than have a civil discussion, you are tired of trying to get us to believe that we are wrong.

I really do not care if we confuse people, I am sure if they ask the correct questions they will get the correct answers, and it isn't because we always did it that way.

Even if we confuse people then at least they start to think about it one poster even admitted that he tried something in blind faith and found it to be so good he tells everybody, until he tried it he simply did not believe it.

I answered an opening post about flow trough the sump, I answered with facts yet for some reason because it isn't not what you are doing then it is wrong.

I did call skimmer manufactures, many of them and was given the same answer, over sizing the skimmer or giving the skimmer more water than it requires is a absolute waste of money.

To be fair, the overflow system made sense and I couldn't find any fault in it. Plus, once it was set up I had hard proof it worked, even though I didn't set it up exactly as I should. If someone then told me it was noisy or didn't work I'd probably laugh before I got angry.

But I am not totally convinced about everything in this thread. It is mostly theoretical. Logically it makes sense but there is no way I could prove it for myself. Logically a high sump flow makes sense, too. I read StirCrazy's posts and he has good points. This is why there is debate. In the beananimal thread, you noticed that the nay-sayers eventually fell away. I don't think they will ever fall away here. Countless people have healthy, successful reef and marine tanks using strong flow through the sump.

FWIW, the Beananimal OF system is AWESOME! There, I said it again.

Well my new clownfish are sick so I'm going to read up on curing them now.

Are you technically not doing the exact same thing? Stir crazy has spent hours on his posts and his examples do have some relevancy but you have shot them down each and every time because you believe you are right...

After reading all of this I can quite clearly see that the gentlemen from Toronto have there facts strait. In there FIFO sump model I'm positive you could achieve higher skimmer efficiency, but lets face it folks the simple truth about it is that very few people have set up there tanks to be FIFO style...
If your tank is not set up to be FIFO lowering your turn over to 1X is useless as you're not filtering all of the water. As Mike has pointed out this is all theoretical, there are so many different variables in the equation to the perfect skimmer its redundant to argue back and forth.

Its funny that this article was posted "http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2010/1/aafeature" as it actually downplays the importance of a skimmer in the reef setting:

"None of the skimmers tested removed more than 35% of the extant TOC, leading to the conclusion that bubbles are really not a very effective medium for organic nutrient removal."

If you read carefully I never mentioned FIFO, do not put words into my mouth.

Funny you should mention the article, did you read it? did you see how the tests were done?

Do you see what "Q " represents and what the values were?

did the original post even mention a skimmer?

I'm even more confused now than before reading this thread....how big is the display tank, how big is the sump, what kinda of skimmer and how many gal is it rated for? also what other equip do you have

I can only lead a horse to water, the rest is out of my hands. This is the last time I answer this question, as there is nothing ambiguous in my responses thus far.

The original question was "just wondering how many times an hour should the tank water go through the sump? 1? 5? 10?".

Before that question can be answered we must first establish why you are using a sump? The answer to that question is the sump is used to house filtration devices so we don't have them hanging on the back of the tank and to a certain extent, to improve efficiency of these filters.

The next question is how much water do these devices require? The answer is whatever the highest demand is of any one particular device you are using. If you have a rapid sand filter that runs on a 1 HP pump, then you should run about 6000 GPH through your sump. If you are using a protein skimmer and it has the highest demand for feed water, then you need to establish how much water it has flowing through it. This number is likely to be 450 GPH, depending on the skimmer design. So in this case the answer to your question is your flow rate through the sump should be 450 GPH, regardless of the size of your tank.

If you are not concerned about the efficiency of your filtration devices, noise, operational cost, plumbing, saltcreep, water quality, temperature, display surface skimming, or initial equipment cost then pick a random number and multiply it by the size of your tank. Then place your protein skimmer in your sump and allow it to randomly draw in water and return it in the same compartment.

My comment was not directed to you, when I said the "Gentlemen in Toronto" I should of said the "Gentlemen in Toronto here for a discussion and not personal attacks". This will be my actual final post, for the original poster I apologize if this got off topic but you sure have a fun 11 page read :lol:.
Levi

I will ask a question again, did you read the link that you posted?

This never got of topic, I responded to the OP and you decided to make it an issue
Whenever I see this statement written it always means the same thing. you simply do not believe it and your way is the best way and you cannot prove it, you have been offered a number of alternatives with proof yet you want us to believe you rather than have a civil discussion, you are tired of trying to get us to believe that we are wrong

Just one more thought, there are many here from Toronto or surrounding areas, please do not make this a geographical argument.

Paul

So what's the verdict? How many times per hour should the water go through the sump?? :lol:

1.567832

I'm just gonna wait for this episode to be shown on mythbusters, not that they are any good but it would be fun to watch.

Alas, I am sumpless. And now I fear proceeding with my planned build which includes a basement sump!!

I give up!!!


Whatever you run for sump flow, is Perfect!

which math, and it was all just off the top of my head.. it is close enough for this discussion.

We can assume that if this is happening we have a hell of a lot better chance of getting a better pulldown than if we put 500 gph or 1500 gph through the sump. the point is the skimmer is going to skim the same amount of water weather it is the same water (or portion there of) over and over or some of the new water going buy. and what does FIFO stand for?? I hate abreabiations as everyone makes them up and doesnt state them on the first use like they should.

I didn't want high flow through the sump, that was a result of wanting high flow out of the tank to carry suspended "crap" out of the maintank into the sump. the settling chamber is the second one. the inlet chamber "first" is about 6X6 and over flows over 2 sides to a 18X12 section, then through some weirs and into the return pump section. as for putting the chiller and UV on the same pump.. not a chance way to far apart flow requirments. All my equipment was in line, except for two pumps. so I had less heat contrubution than most. and what I didn't mention was I was also running another 25 gal tank off the same sump. the new one I am building will be much different with regards to pumps and locations. to me a sump serves to purposes, hide equipment, settle out junk, and add water volume.

One thing that we have to remember is when we have a sump system people tent to treat the water in it as different from the water in the tank, it is all one system and one large water volume, so in reality the flow is a mute point as the water in the system all gets skimes at the same rate no mater what the flow through the sump is, Unless you go with a ultra low flow then you are putting enough of a seperation to the system to actualy had different water qualities in your Sump than you do in the tank, not by much but if the flow is low enough there is a possibility, a fast water flow helps disperse/desolve/spread things more evenly and faster.

I guess the point is to think of your system as a system not two systems, the sump just give a remote option for hiding equipment not a seperate water system.

Steve

you should care. personaly I like to help people and I will try make things as simple as posable if thats what is needed. I never do things because "we always did it that way" if we did I would still be using VHO bulbs and under gravel filters. I do think there are a lot of "snake oil" products out there that are a short cut for people who don't set tanks up properly or tank the time to mature there tanks. there is also a lot of products that prey on or desire for the "easy way" or "quick fix" do some of them work.. ya sure, are they needed .. no. so is some of my thinking old fashion.. ya maybe, do I stay with them because we have always done it that way, Hell no I stay with them because they work.

Steve

FIFO

First In First Out. No reskimming and No bypassing.

thanks Dan.

No problem. I'm so used to using that term in PLC programming that I forget others don't know what it stands for.