Sump planning

[zekezero]

Alright onto my next question... I'm starting to plan out the sump I'll need for my tank. I know I need to over filter and I've heard 3x thrown around but I'm trying to nail down exactly what people are talking about.

Obviously the bigger the sump the more stable my tank will be, but is the 3x goal mostly for filtration elements or is it actually for volume? So should I mostly be looking at putting in extra carbon/bioballs and a nicely oversized skimmer? Or do I really need to push the physical size of the sump more than normal?

As a side question, with a sump/fuge and skimmer am I still going to have to worry about getting extra O2 in or should that be good enough?

Thanks again!

-Zeke

 

[marinebio_guy]

Alright onto my next question... I'm starting to plan out the sump I'll need for my tank. I know I need to over filter and I've heard 3x thrown around but I'm trying to nail down exactly what people are talking about.

Obviously the bigger the sump the more stable my tank will be, but is the 3x goal mostly for filtration elements or is it actually for volume? So should I mostly be looking at putting in extra carbon/bioballs and a nicely oversized skimmer? Or do I really need to push the physical size of the sump more than normal?

As a side question, with a sump/fuge and skimmer am I still going to have to worry about getting extra O2 in or should that be good enough?

Thanks again!

-Zeke

I can't tell you what you need, without knowing how your tank will be set up. Do you plan on having live rock and how much? what kind of substate will you be using and how deep? What type of other animals will you have? What species of octo. will you keep? Do you already have a filter for the tank, Which type?

 

[Illithid]

The "3x" number is saying that if you have a 50 gallon tank and want to put a ceph in it you filter it as if you have a 150 gallon. You get a skimmer "rated" for 150 gallons (or bigger) and enough bioballs and liverock to filter and maintain a 150 gallon.

Skimmers work by injecting air into the water to make the bubbles, this does an excellent job at adding O2 to the system. A wet/dry does the same thing, so if you have both you are set.

If you are making a DIY sump system the bigger problem you will have is stopping all the bubbles from entering the tank. I fixed mine by having the skimmer output to the refugium/feeder tank - that then output to the final sump section where the pump was attached.

 

[DHyslop]

I might add that I don't think a wet/dry is an efficient way to add O2 to a system. While it does provide a lot of surface area for O2 to dissolve in the water, the reaction of NH4 to NO2 to NO3 uses a lot of oxygen.

If your wet/dry doesn't have much nitrogen "load" on it, it may add more oxygen than it uses. It would be interesting to put a probe in the water before the wet/dry and after to see the difference in dO2.

Dan

 

[zekezero]

Perfect info thanks guys! I wasn't looking for specifics on what I need to put in, just ensuring I was correct about what was actually meant by the 3x... Sounds silly I know but I wanted to double check it wasn't volume or tank turnover.

For the bubbles I was planning on setting it up just like you're talking about Illithid and then adding a baffles before the return pump for good measure.

Now it's on to coming up with a plan. Fear not I'll bug you guys again with my specifics before I start putting stuff together.

One more question... (before the next one anyway). I'll probably spec out a 50ish and 100ish setup before I decide what to go with. I'll be doing sand and liverock with a sump (w/fuge) and skimmer. In either case I'll just be keeping one bimac. Do I still need to plan on 3x if I go with the larger 100, or is my target really to go for 150 gal filtration since the actual livestock won't change no matter which tank I go with? Hopefully that made sense and I'm not just babbling.

-Zeke

 

[Nancy]

Hmm, first time anyone asked that question! I'd think your target would be about 150 gallons, not just 3x. What do you other tank experts think?

Nancy

 

[monty]

Hmm, first time anyone asked that question! I'd think your target would be about 150 gallons, not just 3x. What do you other tank experts think?

Nancy

I'm not an expert, but I play one on TV... it seems like there are two different things: the water volume is one thing, which seems like it would provide stability and be a buffer against the octo's waste or ink, or any chemical issues from a fixed contamination source like a rotting dead crab or something. However, the rate at which the each gallon of water gets passed through the filter might be important, too: another way of looking at the 3x rule is that each gallon of water passes through the filter, on average, 3 times as often as in a reef tank. Maybe that's important for catching certain things more quickly, like perhaps systemic issues for the whole tank... A larger tank will be slower to change in good and bad directions. If something goes south, the slower rate of change and large dilution factor might make it less likely that the parameters will go into lethal territory as fast, but it also means that if things do get out of whack, the filtration will have a harder time dealing with it.

What this means in practice, I don't know. As a wild guess, I'd say a bigger tank will at least make it easier to catch the problem before it reaches a lethal level, and you can then take action like water changes, but having the extra filtration allows the system to handle more issues before you notice, and before it has an impact...