Sump never clearing particles

[Longfincalico]

Hello everyone!
I have issues with never ending particles in my aquarium, I'm not a new fishkeeper and I've tried everything under the sun to clear this up, here's a short description

I have a 125 gallon with a 47 gallon sump.
My issue is that the water is always dirty with particulate matter.

I have a 1188 GPH pump
The sump has 4 chambers :
1st chamber: coarse foam10ppi ->fine 30ppi >floss
2nd chamber only 30ppi foam
3rd siporax + moving beg hel-x heaters
4rd pump chamber.
I have an intake that sucks water from the bottom
The outflow from the pump is also on the same side as the intake, I have a very strong circular motion.
The media is not clogged
The tank is mature been running for months and the siporax is maturated for years from previous tanks.
I only have bristlenose and hypancistrus, shrimps, etc.
I do bi weekly or daily small waterchanges with filtered water.
I also tried floss in the last chamber and filter socks I'm the first chamber but they get clogged in 12 hours.
I feed 2-3 times a day as I have a lot of fry with repashy and other algae foods.

I also have tried reducing the flow but in a sump if you turn down the pumps flow you also have to turn down the intake from the valve hence you get even more dirty water

 

[Colin_T]

Do you clean the filter at all?
Can you post a picture showing the entire sump?

I'm assuming the water from the tank is coming into the section with the blue sponge at top and going down into the white and then into a different compartment?
If yes, they you want to put some white filter matting on top of the blue sponge to trap the gunk coming from the aquarium. Wash the white filter matt each week and it will help stop the gunk ending up in the sump.

You also need to clean the sump once a month or so to keep it clean. And gravel clean the main tank every week to remove uneaten food and waste so there is less floating around the aquarium. If you have lots of plants in the tank, just use a gravel cleaner to suck the gunk out from around the plants.

 

[Longfincalico]

Do you clean the filter at all?
Can you post a picture showing the entire sump?

I'm assuming the water from the tank is coming into the section with the blue sponge at top and going down into the white and then into a different compartment?
If yes, they you want to put some white filter matting on top of the blue sponge to trap the gunk coming from the aquarium. Wash the white filter matt each week and it will help stop the gunk ending up in the sump.

You also need to clean the sump once a month or so to keep it clean. And gravel clean the main tank every week to remove uneaten food and waste so there is less floating around the aquarium. If you have lots of plants in the tank, just use a gravel cleaner to suck the gunk out from around the plants.

Of course I clean it, there's no mulm at the bottom and the sponges are not clogged, the white is already filter matting

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I would have a different media arrangement if the sump were mine. I would likely have only a 20 ppi foam in trhe first two chambers and the 30 ppi in the 3rd. There is nor need for the sera media as the 3 foams will host way morehttps://www.swisstropicals.com/library/aquarium-biofiltration/ bacteria than the Sera stuff. The final filtration should always be the finer porosity foam not bio-media. Bio-media is not designed for performing mechanical fltration.

Next, floss should be one of the final media tthe water passes through and not one of the first. The order of media should always go from most coarse to finest.

My next observation may be off point since you do not discus it ans that is how thich the foams sheets are and what quality. I am a big fan of Poret foam because of its quality. I would want he foam sheets to be at least 2 inches thick. Also, while I do use floss in my hand-ons and my canisters, I would not use it in a sump system.

Many years ago I planned to have a sump on my 125 gal tank which I got along with a 150 used. I was very delayed in setting up the tanks and circumstances changed the plan. But in designing the sump system to go under the 125 it was going to use 3 sheets of Poret foam with them all being 20 ppi. 10 is really best for tanks with a heavy amount of solid waste to be filtered out. It will catch the biggest solids. The 20 ppi is great for both mechanical an bio-filtration. Higher porosity foams will catch even finer material and can also host more bacteria. However, 30 ppi and up will clog much faster than the 20 ppi. I did consider using 30 ppo as the final sheet, But I never had to make a final decision as the sump set-up was abandoned

What I learned over the years having Matten filters using Poret and then choosing exclusively 20 ppi was that most mechancal wast in a tank is organic. When this is sucked into the foam it gets broken down. In nature there are more than microorganisms which will start to eat the organic waste. As this causes the particles to get smaller, microorganism can go to work on it as it goes deeper into the foam.

With the Mattens what comes out the back side looks like silt wgich settles onto the bottom of the chanber behind the foam. I soeand under a minute siphoning out the silt when doing weekly maint. I am pretty sure in a sump system using a final foam of 30 ppi the amount of silt would be greatly reduced.

If you have never read the article on the Swiss tropical site, you should do so as it explains all of the above better than I have done. In nature there are bigger critters working on the mechanical waste than we can get in our tanks.
https://www.swisstropicals.com/library/aquarium-biofiltration/