Settling Tank

[Esquare]

Has anybody used a settling tank instead of a filter sock to separate and remove detritus? I was thinking about running the drain from my DT to a 20-gallon bare bottom tank where the detritus would settle to the bottom. Then have overflows from the settling tank run to the fuge and skimmer sections. The idea being to trap all of the detritus in the settling tank where it could be easily siphoned off. I would also use the settling tank as a frag tank.

Does anybody have any thoughts on the viability of this?

[coralfragger101]

My first thought is that it might not work as expected but who knows.

I'm thinking that if your water flow is enough to keep the detritus suspend, which it "has" to be otherwise it wouldn't be coming through the overflow into the settling tank in the first place, then the flow within(and out) of this settling tank would be equal to the flow coming into it so the majority of the detritus should stay suspended and be expelled from the settling tank as well.

I would think you would need to get the water to a low flow area somehow to allow the detritus to settle to the bottom.

[Esquare]

Good point. I think it would work for the fuge portion but maybe not for the whole drain volume. The reason I say that I think it would work for the fuge portion is the idea came from staring at my fuge and seeing all of the detritus there and the frag tank, which is fed from the fuge. My first thought was to switch the frag and fuge so that the water went through the frag first and settled then to the fuge thus giving me less junk in the fuge.

[Esquare]

using baffles would probably help the junk settle but then the tank would be harder to siphon clean.