Okay folks. I've made a 36" tall stand for my 125 and now it's time to plumb it. I was thinking about buying a smaller tank or large Rubbermaid type bin for the sump. I have a EuroReef RS-80 skimmer, hoping that will be powerful enough. The tank is a drilled All-Glass with the overflow kits that come with them.


Any diagrams, ideas, common mistakes to avoid appreciated.

lol, i was doing a response lasty night, but after like the 5th paragraph (it was a long one) my computer crashed, and as it was like 3 in the morning, i didnt havbe the stamina to do it again.

SO, first things first. Most people design their sumps to include a refugium. They are very beneficial in restoring pods and other small crustaceans, and other things as well. Now, there are two general designs to sump/fuges that i have seen. So i will outline them for you (and any other readers) now. Thes are all three compartment designs, it is just the arrangement that differs.

First, i will outline the most common way that these sump/fuges are set-up (this is how i set mine up). The water flows out of the tank and into your first chamber. In this chamber is your skimmer, and any heaters or other mechanical filtration devices you need. This chamber is first as many people believe that the water is dirtiest when it first exits the tank. If you can, many people would reccomend plumbing your output water from the tank directly into the skimmer via a recirculation mod (a couple TR members have done this.

The water will then flow over a partition and into a refugium. The fuge (as it is commonly called) is one of the most beneficial sections (imho). It will replenish all of the little mini crustaceans and pods and stuff that have been eaten by your tank critters. This way, if you hagve something like a mandarin dragonet, it will deplete the number of pods in the tank, but then new pods will continue to flow in from the refugium. Now, the refugium can house a couple of different things (listen to the refugium podcast), but there is no defining thing that makes a fuge a fuge.
Many people either do a DSB, house some sort of macro algae (chaeto seems to be most common), or little bits of live rock. If you have the room, i would reccomend doing all of these things (as i did with my fuge). Basically, the Algaes help with the consumtion of some of the nitrates or nitrites (can never remember which) while also acting as a safe haven for pods and even brine shrimp to breed and thrive.
What some people do as well is create a dedicated Fuge tank, display it, and house seahorse and or pipefish in there. This is a perfect place for a seahorse (providing the dimensions are correct. Dont want dave jumpin all over me cuz i said anything is fine for a seahorse :p). In the way that there is nothign to bother theseahorse, outcompete them for food, etc... Of course, having a seahorse in your fuge will somewhat defeat the purpose of the fuge, eating all the pods itself before they can get bakc into the tank.
Enough about the fuge (went overboard, My bad) and onto the next section.

This is the boring section (sorry to all those people who sit in the back room and stare at their pumps XD). This is the final section where your pump to return water back to the tank is held. I also house all of my probes and such in there. and btw, this is the section that will drop in water height whent he water evaporates FYI (just in case an auto top off is in your future).

So, that is the general way to do a sump/fuge. BTW if you do any dosing, many people say keep it in the sump section, personally, i dose anything into the pump section, so as not to disturb your fuge. However, if it will throw off the tank params top a greater degree, i'd rather have a swing in my fuge by dosing in the skimmer section, then having a swing in my DT and having stuff die.

Okay, onto configuration two. I won't go inot a great explanation here, as i have already done that once :p

Going from right to left (it doesnt have to be this specific) the first chamber on the right will be your skimmer section. It will then flow to the centre chamber, that will be your return section, thats right, the return. On the left side is where you put your fuge.

How does this work you ask? You are to split the water coming from your DT into two pipes. One pipe will go to your skimmer section, while the other goes to the fuge. Many people have a higher flow on the skimmer pipe as many fuges do better with low water speeds. The water then flows over from both sides into your return pump area, and back to the tank.

I dont think there is a huge difference between the two configs i outlined here. But there are some pros to each that the other doesnt have.

Config Number one (S/F/R)
pros
-Generally easier to plumb
cons
-Any dosing done in the skimmer chamber can throw off the fuge

Config Number Two
pros
-Any dosing done in the skimmer section or the return section will not affect the fuge.
-Water speeds can be regualted diffeerently between the skimmer and fuge section.
cons
-Require a bit more plumbing wise :s

Again, i myself dont think theres much of a difference, if you want to see the configurations i speak of, you can view my thread (link in my sig) for config #1, or another TR members for Config #2. if you cant find a TR member with that, ask and ill look, i know someone here has it.

I am amased i actually wrote this much. Maybe with some tweaking Rob might sticky this somewhere for sump notes XD
Hope you had fun reading all of that, any questions, feel free to ask :D

i used a 20 long under my 125 reef before i plumbed it through a wall. it was a stand alone system, and worked great in this config ... return on left end / skimmer in center / drains on right end. i eventually added another tank to the setup for the fuge, but that was easy to do. i can get into that if you want to.

I was thinking about a 55 or 33L for the sump. I guess I'd partition it with plexiglass or acrylic, no plans on keeping a seahorse or any specimens down there. Now that I have the doors off, it's gonna be a little tricky getting a 48" tank in there -maybe impossible.

you will have to do that BEFORE you fill it with water. you can only get a BIG tank under there through the top of the stand (on a normal stand).

This ain't a normal stand, bein' that I built it. Top is solid, back is solid. There's a good bit of leeway but not 48". I'm leaning towards a 38 gal at this point, or just using plastic containers of some sort.

what i did was this ...

i had the 20L on the left side of the stand, and a 30g acrylic sump on the right side (sitting on 3 2x4's). i drilled the acrylic sump with 2 1" bulkheads and it drained into the 20L.

the drains went into the far end of the 30g and overflowed into the 20L from the 1" bulkheads (hence the 2x4's [to make it a little higher] in the 30g). let me see if i can find a pic for you. it was VERY cheap to do ...

something like this ... blue are return lines and black are drains.

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n75/lReef_lKeeper/tankdrawing.gif