I have emptied my 90g tropical tank ready for my marine set up. I am going to be using a 3ft tank in the stand as a sump and am trying to work out the plumbing. I would like 2 drains, 1 for the main sump and 1 going to a refrigirum (sp?) I am thinking of having 50mm bulkheads for the drains with 2 corner overflows. will these be big enough? Or too big? Or just right? How many and what size returns will i need? And also roughly how many gph return pump will i need? I think that is all for now. Cheers in advance for your help...
Sump Plumbing Advice Needed Please.
- Thread starter rodg98133
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andywg
Bored into leaving
2 50mm overflows will allow a huge flow through the tank. I have a 100 imperial gallon tank and I just use a single 40mm drain without issue.
Why have the fuge on a separate drain? If possible you want to have the main tank drain down to the sump which pumps water up to the fuge above the tank form whence the water falls into the main display (that's sort of how my reef is, though my reef has a second return pump in the sump which pumps water through the frogfish tanks).
Your pump size is determined by the turnover you want. I always try and have a low turnover in my sump (5x turnover before taking head into account) and create the movement in the display tank with far cheaper to run pumps that aren't fighting gravity.
Why have the fuge on a separate drain? If possible you want to have the main tank drain down to the sump which pumps water up to the fuge above the tank form whence the water falls into the main display (that's sort of how my reef is, though my reef has a second return pump in the sump which pumps water through the frogfish tanks).
Your pump size is determined by the turnover you want. I always try and have a low turnover in my sump (5x turnover before taking head into account) and create the movement in the display tank with far cheaper to run pumps that aren't fighting gravity.
Agree with Andy here on this one. A 50mm drain is definitely enough capacity. I do applaud the use of dual drains though if one drain is the "primary" and the other is a backup in case the primary gets clogged. Safety through redundancy 
As for the refugium, you can also incorporate that into the sump tank itself. Its easy enough to just section off the sump tank itself and have your refugium there, that's how I do it.
Lastly, as for flow, you'll want about 5 times turnover through the sump, so 400-500gph is the ACTUAL number you want. You'll have to source a pump capable of probably 700gph at zero head if you plan on keeping the sump under the display.
As for the refugium, you can also incorporate that into the sump tank itself. Its easy enough to just section off the sump tank itself and have your refugium there, that's how I do it
.Lastly, as for flow, you'll want about 5 times turnover through the sump, so 400-500gph is the ACTUAL number you want. You'll have to source a pump capable of probably 700gph at zero head if you plan on keeping the sump under the display.
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