flow through your sump

[BigJay]

just curious what some of you are flowing through your sump? I have about 1100-1200 GPH right now and its sucking the bubbles through before my baffles can do anything about it. 1000 GPH to main tank, 100 to 6g display fuge and 60 to phosban reactor. Skimmer pulls and dumps in same chamber so not counting that.
Really got myself questioning why I am flowing so much water through it and was thinking of cutting the main tank pump in half or 3/4's and removing the phosban pump and 6g pump and branching it off the main pump.

[BigAl07]

On my 90g Reef with a 29g Sump I've got roughly 1300gph through the sump with no ill effects...

[BigJay]

hmm , when your return hits your sump does it go through anything? I did have a 7" cotton filter sock but I just took it out and thats when the bubbles started getting through. Not a prob for the 90 main but the 6g is getting bubble build up on all the rocks.
I just replumbed all the return lines to go down into the water and disperse instead of just waterfalling in which made it worse too. I was thinking of filling the sump up with base rock to help catch it but the LFS was out.

[Frankie]

It's not a fair question for me, I have a huge remote sump setup. But if I was to guess I would have to say there is about 5000+ moving in the main sump and that skims off to the zeosump that returns to the DT. That sump has about 2500 moving through it. All the bubble stuff like the return, skimmer, calcium reactor and frag tank dump into the 75 gallon mian sump. Then it all skims off the top to another 30 gallon sump I keep my zeoreactor in. That is very bubble free because of the skim off. When I had a regular under the tank sump I used filter socks for bubble traps and they wored wonderful. I recomend installing one and changing it out every two days for clogging issues. I kept 4 of them and washed them once a week.

[BigAl07]

If I am "Doing Maintenance" in the tank I'll slip a filter sock on the input just to strain things. Other than that I don't HAVE anything else "Filtering" in my system (other than the skimmer but that's different).

I did make a mod to where the over-flow empties UNDER water which seems to help a lot. Then it travels through a Bubble Trap to skimmer area, then another bubble trap to pump area.

[BigJay]

ok Frankie. Yeah I have two and changed them every 5 days since they were pretty large but after 5 days they definetly started clogging. I'll reinstall my socks.

[BigJay]

I should mention my sump is only 20g. By product of not thinking my 90g tank purchase through. A bigger sump won't fit.

[BigAl07]

I can see where 20g would be cutting it close. when I first fired up the 90g I had bubble issues but once everything "Broke In" it settled down.

[ZAPCOnj]

I have a 15gal sump (says 20 but it's 15) and i only get bubbles flowing though all 3 chambers when i have the water level in chamber 3 too high the water from chamber 2 will flow over the top and in to # 3

here is a pic of mine


I have a 900gph pump in there and my overflow is rated at 800gph. the CPR skimmer blows bubbles all over chamber 2 but the trap seems to get them all. if i remove the sponge and the carbon from the bubble trap in between chamber 2 & 3 i get bubbles all over the place in the DT.

how big of an area do you have to play around with for a sum jay?