how many times a hour should the water go through the sump?

[mr.wilson]

Originally Posted by banditpowdercoat

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.

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.