Sump questions

[Donnie Vazquez]

I've made a 4 gallon plexi hang-on sump/refugium for a 10 gallon reef
I'm working on. The concept was to have a pump in the tank supply the
sump via a tube, and let the sump overflow back into the tank. My LFS
guy says this is a bad idea because all of the plankton, food, etc, gets
ground up by the impeller in the pump. He recommends an overflow to
siphon the tank water into the sump and then pump it from there back to
the tank. But if it gets ground up being pumped out of the tank, what's
stopping it from being ground up when pumped back in. This doesn't
really make sense to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

--
Donnie Vazquez
Sunderland, MD

[richard reynolds]

> I've made a 4 gallon plexi hang-on sump/refugium for a 10 gallon reef
> I'm working on. The concept was to have a pump in the tank supply the
> sump via a tube, and let the sump overflow back into the tank. My LFS
> guy says this is a bad idea because all of the plankton, food, etc, gets
> ground up by the impeller in the pump. He recommends an overflow to
> siphon the tank water into the sump and then pump it from there back to
> the tank. But if it gets ground up being pumped out of the tank, what's
> stopping it from being ground up when pumped back in. This doesn't
> really make sense to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

well like most lfs's
good advice, wrong reason, and like everything else in this hobby there are
alwasy catches,

if you ran mechanical filtration, grinding up the plankton would be bad, it
would release the nutrients from the plankton adding to the nutrients in
your water, instead of allowing it to be caught in the mechanical filter.the
other thing to look at is most small powerheads that are not pumping 4' of
head are gentle enough on plankton if you dont run mechanical filtration,
then from a plankton standpoint it doesnt really matter. the better reason
for the pump to be in the sump is waterlevel, the tank will stay at a fixed
waterlevel, while the sump will change from evap and such this will make
maintenence a tad easier, and give you a protected area to place any water
level detection devices.

> Donnie Vazquez
> Sunderland, MD

--
richard reynolds