It begins...

[squibege]

Well, I've gone and done it now...



As you can see this is not exactly the "small" tank I was talking about. Santa was very nice to me so I decided to nab a pre-drilled 90g with stand, skimmer (bubble Magnus curve 5), and return pump (fluval). Bought a 30g long to use as a sump, grabbed some man made rock for $2/lb. Have salt, test kits, refractometer, heaters, power head.... I think I'm ready to get going on the plumbing!



This is my plan for a sump. First section is for the drain (Herbie), not planning on running filter socks full time but may throw a sponge or something at the bottom to collect detritus. Skimmer, etc section next followed by a fuge. Bubble trap baffles into the return pump section.

Main question-
How big should the return pump section be? Planning on one sqft for skimmer, one sqft for fuge, and the other sqft between the drain and return.

[Myka]

Wow look at you go!

If you aren't going to buy an auto top off, you will need a bigger return chamber or you will have to top it up everyday. The bigger the return chamber the longer it can go. If you get an auto top off (it's on of those things that once you do it, you never go back lol) then you can make the return chamber smaller. I use an auto top off and I like to incorporate a top off chamber into sump which holds the RO water for the auto top off to use.

I don't like to use a fuge, so I use that saved space for the above mentioned RO tank.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

When you plumb your tank, dry-plumb everything first to make sure it all fits. Better to get it right before messing with the PVC glue. Then use a marker to draw a line between pieces so you can line everything up the same way when you are ready to add the PVC glue and bond it permanently. That way you don't have to guess if its going to all fit or be in the right place. Always buy extra joints and PVC pieces than you think you need cause it really sucks to have to stop in the middle of plumbing your tank cause you're missing that one "elbow". All the plumbing places like RONA around here allow you to return extra pieces with a receipt.