baffles - over, under, over OR under, over, under

[njp14333]

its seems that over, under, over is the preferred setup, although the more i think about it, the less practical it seems. as "ChemE" said in another thread:

Wouldn't under-over-under make more sense since bubbles would be forced to sink twice to make it to the return and water entering the final chamber would not do so by crashing/cascading over the final baffle. My way the water would underflow into the return chamber and not have a chance to create extra bubbles.

he really seems to have a point. can any tell me why this setup wouldnt be better than O, U, O?

[smcdonn]

Well say for a fuge setup where you have a deep bed of crushed coral or sand and some macro algae, you really cant have it flow under because a lot of times this algae and stuff is on the bottom.

[njp14333]

i agree that makes sense if you have a sand bed in the sump, but what if you just have some rock and cheato as a fuge, then you could just put some eggcrate in front of the baffle to prevent the cheato from going through.

[pk1]

I had my sump set up that way for a while, and since the water in that area is not very turbulent, I started to develop a film on the top of the water. Other than that I saw no problems...HTH

PK

[smcdonn]

What about pods. do they float or sink?

[BeanAnimal]

they swim

[itstheantitang]

In the skimmer section the under over under makes more sense.