The Puffer Forum

strike2 wrote:Yep thats it, I wont need this for freshwater, will I?

You should be able to buy the tank with or without the overflows, but if I were you, I would strongly consider a sump system (for freshwater, saltwater, or brackish)

You could probably build it yourself for less than the cost of a good cannister filter.

One of the things I really like about sumps is that you can relocate your heater(s) and protein skimmers (if it's a marine tank) so you have less unslightly things in/on your tank. If you want to invest the time and money you can have auto top-off and auto water changing also.

Any good sites to check out sumpsand protein skimmers (just for further knowledge)?

strike2 wrote:Any good sites to check out sumpsand protein skimmers (just for further knowledge)?

Protein Skimmers are for marine tanks. I only mentioned them because if you're running a marine tank w/ sump you can put the protein skimmer in your sump rather than have the unslightly thing hanging in your tank.

Google is your friend. A quick search for DIY Sump gave me quite a few good links. So I'm sure you could keep yourself busy reading for hours.

A couple of quick thoughts:
1) A lot of the DIY articles people are making a custom sump tank out of acrylic. I would avoid this route (unless you need the sump to fit in a custom space). I would recommend building one in a tank (a standard 29gal or larger would probably be fine). Just figure out what partitions you need and have them cut them out of acrylic/glue them in place.

2) When building the sump you need to keep in mind that during a power outage the sump needs to be able to handle all the water that is going to drain out of the tank. Basically if your water level is about 1" above your sump drain height in the tank. If the power goes out that whole 1" of water is going to drain into your sump and not be displaced by the pump. On a standard 180g -- 72" x 24" x 1" = 1,728^3" or about 7.5 gallons would drain out. so your sump would need to hold at least an extra 7.5 gallons.

3) Make sure you get a good pump. Has to be able to support the gph you need at a head height of probably 4' or more.

What is the general purpose of the sump?

strike2 wrote:What is the general purpose of the sump?

It's just a big filter. You can fit way more media that you could in even the largest cannister.

interesting.

strike2 wrote:interesting.

Yeah the cool thing is that you can really customize them to be anything you want. You can have your sump be a wet/dry filter (by having a drip tray over bioballs). You can have a large section to actually keep live plants or fish in. You can use them to hide your heaters (like I mentioned before). With plumbing you can do auto top-offs and water changes...

Another nice thing with sumps is that your water level doesn't ever drop in your tank, it's always full. (the water level does drop in the sump, so you still need to replace water that has evaporated off, but your tank doesn't look partially empty after a week of not adding any water). When you do water changes, what a lot of people do is just shut the pump off, drain all the water out of the sump, then fill it up with the new water and turn the pump back on.

They are really great for adding meds, conditioners, etc. Cause you can add them to the sump and they will get mixed properly into the tank rather than have a heavy concentration in 1 area for a while.

If you don't want to build it yourself, you can get prebuilt sumps. They are obviously a lot more expensive..