Help Drilling 15 gal to sump

cdhollan · #1 09-29-2008, 11:51 PM

Hey i am starting a new nano and i plan on having a sump. This will be the first time i am using a sump and i have some basic questions. I want to drill the 15 gal and have a 10 gal sump. How do i drill it so that the sump does not overflow?? Any tips would be great thanks.

karazy · #2 09-30-2008, 12:16 AM

what exactly do you mean by overflow? do you know about the return pump and all that?

xtreme · #3 09-30-2008, 12:38 AM

check out this page:

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

cdhollan · #4 09-30-2008, 03:43 AM

i understand the return pump, does it just gotta be strong and pwerful enough to keep water in a constant circulation? and where abouts do you drill the hole in the tank and how big thanks.

mark · #5 09-30-2008, 04:12 AM

If having a overflow chamber, doesn't really matter where you drill as display level is the height of the weir.

As for the pump, as long as the your overflow can flow the max output at head of the pump, water will find it's own level.

Get an idea of how much you want the flow through your sump then use this calculator to determine hole size.

RC have a head-loss calculator and there's a pump guide on RDO.

slakker · #6 09-30-2008, 04:15 AM

I think you're worried about overflowing if there's a power outage? Are you using a Biocube or other self contained system?

Basically, you want to ensure that where you drill prevents the main tank from dumping all the water in case of a power failure. So if you drill the bottom, then you need a overflow bulkhead/weir. You also want to ensure the overflow can can keep up with pump.

You also want to ensure in case the main tank to sump line is clogged or slows down, you don't dump the sump's content into your main, which will also overflow.

So if it was me... and not using a bulkhead type design, I would drill the main tank an inch or so lower than the maximum water line you want in the main tank. Maybe use a 1" hole, this should keep up with most sump to main tank return pumps. Then you can calculate the volume to run into the sump in-case of a power failure. ie; the surface area of the tank x the 1" of the hole drilled. Then make sure you keep that volume as "spare" in the sump... ie; if the volume is say 2 gallons, make sure your sump doesn't have more than say 7 gallons of water when it's running....

As for the sump overflowing the main, a basic baffle design can assure you don't overflow the main by ensuring the "baffled" volume doesn't contain more volume than the volume between the drilled area to the top of your main tank...

Hope I made sense... been in the wine tonite... *hic*