Home made sump pictures

[dkedrowitsch]

Because I'm new here figured I'd post some pictures of my latest creation. It was made as a copy of an original design my Marc Levenson from http://www.melevsreef.com just modified in size to fit my stand dimensions.

My first acrylic project...and it holds water! It's been in use for a week and works wonderful. The sump is fed from a CPR 800gph overflow box, and the water is returned to the tank via a Mag 9.5 through 3/4" PVC. A little of the return is fed into the refugium where it overflows through a 1" drainpipe/bulkhead back into the return chamber of the sump. An Ebo Jager 250 heater sits in the return area under the refigium. The skimmer is a Berlin Triple Pass Turbo. The refugium holds about 10 gallons and has about an inch of Southdown sand. No macro algae yet, none of my LFS (including That Fish Place!) has any so I will have to mail order. The only thing in it at the moment is a little blue leg hermit to eat a little of the cyano I seem to be having problems with due to the tank only being about 2 months old and using cheep Crystal Sea salt and well water from the tap. I have since bought Oceanic's new salt mix and will be getting and RODI unit soon.


Comments?

 

[liquid]

Looks pretty good to me!

Shane

 

[cdeakle]

WOW!

How much did you spend on supplies? Especially the acrylic?

 

[Anonymous]

Off to an excellent start I'd say! (I love that surface skimmer on the 'fuge..)

Only comment I can think of is that if it were me, I'd find a different LFS. TFP gouges on drygoods - especially considering their buying power - and their livestock (at least what it was when they were my "LFS" back in the early to mid '90s) left a LOT to be desired... - And sorry, but no, I don't know of a better one near you right now but I would suggest you look into contacting your local reef club.. - Someone would probably be more than happy to give you some macro trimmings to start from.

Norm

 

[dkedrowitsch]

4'x8' sheet of 1/4" Acrylite - $92
Weld-on #3 - $4.95
Weld-on #16 - $5.99
1" Bulkhead thread ID & OD - $8 (I think)
1" PVC for fuge drain - Scrap I had laying around FREE

It's dimentions (from memory) are about 35.75W x 18T x 21D. It extends out of the back of the stand about 6" except where it has a 6x5" notch so it fits around the rear center support. The fact it sticks out so far is great because it holds so much more water, and all the plumbing runs strait down in/out the sump without any extra angles to slow the pump down. It's 18" tall except in the front where it is only 15" tall so I can fit the skimmer in and out and reach my arms in to give me enough room to get to the refugium, plumbing, wiring, clean etc.

I'm glad you like it. It took quite a bit of patience. The hardest part was getting the bubble trap pannels to seal and not leak the inlet chamber where the skimmer sits into the return chamber. Not all the pannels were the exact same witdh (the best I could do with a crappy table saw) so I had to use clamps to squeeze the walls into the pannels while sealing with weld-on #16.

All in all, I think I got a GREAT sump for $100 and a days work.

 

[Anonymous]

It looks like you need to mow. :lol:

Seriously, great job on the sump. Did you make sure to get it in the tank stand with enough room that you can remove it, or at least gain easy enough access to it so that you can clean it, remove your skimmer for cleaning, etc.? I ran into that problem and just recently had to gut part of my stand to remove the sump to another location ( http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=50425 )

 

[Anonymous]

(I love that surface skimmer on the 'fuge..)

I agree. That's slick.

 

[dkedrowitsch]

My friend needs to mow, we built it at his house. I have an apartment so there is some old lady that does that for me.

It fits perfect. I must have measured 1000 times before building it. To fit it in, the center brace had to be removed WHILE the tank was on it and full. It won't fit any other way because it sticks out the back 6" and wraps around the rear center support. Luckly the support seems to be more for stability because there was no weight on it what so ever. It was stapled in place so I just knocked it out with my fist and used 1.5" screws to replace it after the sump was in place. I have over 6" clearance to reach inside to clean or mess with my plumbing/wiring. The skimmer fits in and out perfectly when tipped on it's side. As Jim Carrey would say, "Like a glove!!" I should never need to remove it except for some reason to reach behind the stand (the tank is in a corner). Like to get to my 2x175W metal halide ballast unit. I forgot it was back there when installing the sump. I think I can reach it from around the side and coax it up over the top of the tank if I need to. It is heavy from the two electromagnetic ballasts in the huge aluminum heatsink case.

 

[dkedrowitsch]

BTW if the 'fuge bottom looks like it's sloped, it is. It's sloped up about 1/4" so the bubbles from the fuge surface skimmer dont get caught up under there. Works great! Also, the first piece in the bubble trap is leaning in twards the skimmer/inlet chamber to help make a smoother water flow down into the trap...kinda like the angled wall of a dam. Catches all bubbles except for microbubbles from the overflow feed hose. Still gotta figure out how to cut those down. I have some ideas I have been thinking about trying.

Now to figure out why my Mag 9.5 has started making air noises like it has air trapped in it...started after taking it apart and cleaning it before putting it in the sump. Anyone know what end of the impeller shaft the rubber spacer/washer goes? Maybe I have it on the wrong end. I put it on the magnet end.

 

[christssoldiers]

My friend needs to mow, we built it at his house. I have an apartment

Does the landlord know you have 100 gallons of water in HIS living room :wink: when I moved out of my apartment about 3 years ago my landlord saw me moving my tank and her jaw bounced off the sidewalk three times :lol:

On another note, I like your sump, it looks very similar to mine actually.

 

[fishfanatic2]

Very cool. I have been thinking about a sump for a while and this gives some ideas. Looks like you got everything in there!

 

[Anonymous]

OMG thats sweet..

 

[Anonymous]

sweeet!

I just picked up some weldon 16 today. I'm going to finish my sump tomorrow! (9.5"w x16"lx15"h) for under my 20.

 

[melev]

I'm registered just so I could see your pictures!

Very nice job, I'm glad you liked the design. I found a nice way to limit microbubbles in r.a.m.r. a few weeks ago, so here is the URL on RC:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showt ... did=354779

Howdy, y'all!

 

[DaisyPolyp]

I'm registered just so I could see your pictures!

Excellent!!! we're glad to have you:

 

[dkedrowitsch]

Hey Marc! Glad you're glad I liked your design. It's working out really well.

I came home last night to a power head that got "un-suction-cupped" from the glass and made a mess of my southdown/aragonite so the sump had some dust in the bottom. Got it all cleaned out and looking great again this morning. I've been running a canister filter completely packed with floss to help keep the water polished while my substrate is maturing. At first, the slightest water movement over the sand would create huge sand storms that clouded the tank for days. Now it's pretty forgiving and clears within an hour, even with the powerhead incident last night. Luckly the stupid PowerSweep that fell jams up the instant anything gets sucked in so it didn't run long enough to make a major mess. If it would have been one of my MJ1200s....I'm betting all the substrate would have been relocated to the other side of the tank by the time I got home. The PowerSweep has tiny suction cups that love to come loose all the time. I have to practally beg the MJ1200s to come off when I want to move them around.

So yeah, I'm very happy. It's easy to keep clean except for down in the bubble trap.

BTW: I like the ideas from that link you posted about controlling the microbubbles. I will give that a shot ASAP.

Thanks again for the wonderful design! It seems some others here my use it as well. You're the Sump Man!

 

[melev]

I've had that exact thing happen with a MJ1200, and it moved a ton of beach sand from the corner of the tank across three-quarters of the length of my 55g. It was a mess and a lot of corals were closed up. It took me about 20 minutes to get things back to normal, after the initial shock of seeing 'snow' in my display one morning. Fortunately, beach sand is a much different consistency from aragonite sand.

You might consider making an acrylic bracket, and ziptie the power sweep pump to that bracket, so it can never fall again.

Please be sure to post how that reverse Durso works in your application, because in principle it should be great but I've not actually made one myself. I seem to have a knack for understanding how something will work even before it is built, but until I try it myself I can't be positive.

 

[dkedrowitsch]

That’s a great idea. Not sure how I would hang the bracket because the power head is on the lift side piece of glass and the canopy fits snuggly over the edge of the tank so there is no way to hook anything to it. I could always build a small acrylic hook/shelf thing and screw it into the inside of the canopy on each side of the tank to hang stuff from. Kind of like a bathroom towel rack. Then just run the acrylic the power head is attached to up out of the water and hook it over the piece screwed into the canopy. Hmm...ideas ideas!

Yes I will be sure to let you know how the reverse Durso works out. I need to buy a 1" T and elbow. The only 1" PVC I use is in the fuge return drain and my overflow bulkhead but that uses ribbed tubing so I've never needed to buy many PVC parts.

Actually, how do you like your 1" pvc on the return Mag 9.5? I also use a Mag 9.5 amd I used 3/4". Does it make much difference in the flow? When I decided to use 3/4" it was because I figured even though the pipe was a little more restrictive, it was less water volume it had to lift back into the display tank.

When I put this new sump in, I stood the Mag up so the outlet faces strait up and piped directly into this. Since I did this, I have been getting some cavitation noises from the pump but I think it may be because when I redid the plumbing, I took the pump apart to clean any Southdown junk out of it and I might have put the spacer on the wrong end of the impeller shaft. Any idea what end it goes on? I put it on the magnet end to push the impeller fins away from the pump body. It looked good, but might be what’s causing the noise.

Thanks Marc!

 

[melev]

Actually, the return pump is too much for my overflow box, so I had to set up my plumbing where so of the water is rediverted into the sump.

According to Danner MFG, you want your plumbing to be double the size of the outlets. So with a 3/4" outlet on the Mag 9.5, you are supposed to use 1.5" plumbing on your return line.

That seems a little too big for my tank, plus my overflow already can't keep up, so 1" is what I used. It might be the solution to your noise issues, btw. I've never noticed a rubber spacer when I'll pulled my pump apart for cleaning, and I've cleaned it several times since I got it. The impellar is very close to the body of the pump.

Here's an image that explains the plumbing better than words:

 

[dkedrowitsch]

Marc, I used your plumbing ideas too. I had a union on the pump but stopped using it because the ¾” union had such a small hole that is must have been fairly restrictive. I simply didn’t glue the fitting that screws onto the pump so I can just wiggle it apart. Not the safest idea but it’s really snug so I’m not too worried. See mine? The ‘fuge is messy in this picture from my cyano outbreak but everything is looking better now that the cyano has since mostly died off.

Dieter