Baffled by Baffles

[SMARTbomb]

Can anyone point me in the direction of a good article on building a fuge.

I'm very confused about height and distance of baffles.


Should the baffles be solid, have slats or holes?

I want to be able to fit my skimmer, thermometer, have fuge area for LR,LS, MacroAlgae etc.., have room for chiller to come, and pump to send back up to display tank.

Thanks,

[BeanAnimal]

Very simple....

The baffles provide one service, that is to prevent bubbles from traveling through the sump to the output.

The further apart you place them, the less velocity the water going through them has. As you lower the velocity it makes it harder for bubbles to get sucked down under a baffle into the next chamber. So make them as far apart as you can.

Bean

[eshook]

Melev's site is *the* site for sumps. Heres the link

http://www.melevsreef.com/links.html

[BeanAnimal]

I like melev a lot, I like his site and also think they guy provides a lot of useful information... but I do get a chuckle every time somebody says that.

Sump design is much less complicated than people make it out to be.

1) Your sump needs to be as large as you can make it. The larger the systems total volume of water, the better.

2) The pump compartment on your sump is where the water will evaporate from. If you make it too smal (very common) then evaporation will allow the pump to create a vortex in the shallow water and suck in air. This means MAKE THE PUMP COMPARTMENT AS LARGE AS POSSIBLE.

3) Don't get sucked into the "the pump compartment should be sized to prevent the display from overflowing if your drains get clogged or your siphon breaks" This is a silly notion at best and will only work if you don't have an auto-top off. It also means that you will be constantly manually topping of the sump due to evaporation. The solution is to build a better overflow system and make the sump compartment as large as possible.

4) Run the water level in the sump as high as possible, while still leaving room for the back flow of all of your equipment during a power outage.

5) Your OVER baffles need to be JUST ABOVE the normal operating level. This will keep them quite and prevent a huge water fall from creating even more bubbles.

6) The skimmer should go in the INPUT side of the sump, BEFORE THE BAFFLES. Place teh simmer on a custom built pedastel if you need to move it up out of the water. This will keep the water level constant and the skimmer will perform much better. IF at all possible the skimmer should be run inline with the overflows and discharge into the sump.

7) When at all possible don't build your fuge into your sump. It will take up a lot of room making it and the rest of the sump a compromise in design.

8) Sump flow does not need to be high. It really does not need to be much more than your skimmer needs to operate. The lower the water velocity the faster detritus will settle out. This gives you a good place to let it collect and vacuum it out.

9) Put a drain bulkhead and valve in to make water changes easy. If your crafty you can also use this to drain out the detritus. A sloped bottom or troughed bottom is good for this.

10) PLACE THOSE BAFFLES AS FAR APART AS POSSIBLE.

11) Put some rock at the outlet of the last baffle to help catch the bubbles that do make it through. Just don't put so many that you create a detritus trap.

12) the more flow control gadgets and do-dads you have the more trouble you will have. Keep it simple.

13) Use Closed loops for flow, not big return pumps.


I personally think in sump fuges are a waste of space and time. They are not really big enough to do anything useful, add complexity to something very simple and create more of a maintenance problem than they are worth. Of course not all of us have the luxury of above tank or seperate fuges.

Bean

[Zigzag Man]

Great post BeanAnimal, however, I have to disagree with this:

This means MAKE THE PUMP COMPARTMENT AS LARGE AS POSSIBLE.

If you're using an automatic top-off system, you really don't want a 'huge' pump compartment, because that's where you're going to see evaporation... it's much more stable to have a small amount of evaporation topped-off than it is to dump in a whole gallon or two of fresh water all at once (or kalkwasser). With an auto top-off, usually smaller is better (within reason of course). In my sump, my pump compartment holds about 5 gallons running, and I top off about a quart at a time with my short-throw magnetic float switch... and I consider my pump compartment at the 'upper-end' of size... any larger and it would top-off too infrequently and dose too much kalk at a time (I have about 140g of total water volume).

I guess my point is really only applicable if using an automatic top-off system, but I wanted to add to the discussion... the thing is that most people eventually 'do' go to an automatic top-off, which would require building-in a smaller evaporation area to keep water parameters as stable as possible.

Otherwise, great post. :thumbsup:

[BeanAnimal]

ZigZag I agree that you don't want to dump a lot of top-off water at once. However when your out of town for two days and your top-off system fails, you don't want the sump to run dry either.

My water level stats within about 1/8" but I can evaporate over 15 gallons if my top-off fails and still not have a problem. Of course the evaporation will cause a slight rise in salinity, but this will be over a matter of about 5-7 days and not be much of a problem either.

Each solution is sometimes a compromise as to what can happen and what the results will be.

I guess I should have qualified that part of the response better. I also do not like top-offs that are float switch driven by a single float or series float setup. In my opinion, the bare minumum way to fly is with a latch type of curcuit and at least 3 floats (One start float, one stop float, and a safety float). However after a lot of thinking I have decided I don't like that setup either (though it is great for you KALK guys).

For FW top-off folks, the best setup (IMHO) is as follows:

1) 4-5 gallon pail with START, STOP, SAFETY) float switches connected to solenoid valve

2) Output of solenoid feeds 5 gallon pail through a FLOAT VALVE near the top of the pail.

3) 5 gallon pail feeds FLOAT VALVE in tank.

4) Float SWITCH in TANK just above FLOAT VALVE wired in series with solenoid.

Its not al las complicated as it sounds. The pail isolates your tank from the water supply through a solenoid and 2 float switches and 2 float valves. The tank water level remains constant and your RO/DI only cycles 5 gallons at a time.

It would take a failure of the solenoid, AND both float valves to flood your tank with more than 5 gallons of water. A failure of any 2 of the 3 devices would only allow at the most, 5 gallons of fresh water to enter your system. Float valves never fail to open, they only fail to close do to fully close. Float switches connected properly to relays don't fail either.

The float in the sump will be above the normal water level so it will not be prone to snails or gunk and the floats in the fresh water pail will stay clean, it's fresh water!

The extra float switch in the tank (the one right above the float valve) is there in case the sump overfills due to a failure of that valve. It would take the float switch failing also to cause a flood.

The extra float switch in the top-off pail is to prevent it from overflowing in case of a stuck float switch, valve And SOLENOID.

This could be used with a KALK reactor inline, but I am not sure how well the float valve would fare with KALK dripping from it.

Sorry to send this thread WAY OT... and I hope this makes some sense.

Bean

[xtrstangx]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6779334#post6779334 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by BeanAnimal
The baffles provide one service, that is to prevent bubbles from traveling through the sump to the output.

What about providing a constant water level in the baffled sections to improve skimmer production? :D