Duplex sump concept

[borcu]

is benthic zone must be totally dark?

[Coyle]

borcu, from my understanding of this setup (albeit basic at this point), the "benthic zone" should be dark to achieve optimal conditions for most water polishing organisms to thrive. You could probably do it without a completely dark zone, but you would be sacrificing diversity which will probably result in a reduction of the associated benefits.

[Borge]

Do I read correctly now, it it preferably completly black?

[gaspar]

Keeping this outstanding thread alive into 2009, here is a photo of my
my up and running BZ sump with thanks once again to our esteemed
Mr. Wilson and the other fine contributors in this Reef Central Community.

This photo was taken in early February last year when I first connected
the completed sump to my 40 gallon breeder display tank.




The tank is doing great and the BZ sump is definitely a success!

Here is how it looks today...




Happy New Year to everyone contributing to Reef Central!

[mr.wilson]

Great to hear everything is working out well with your tank. Even with the best plans and execution, reef tanks can throw you some curve balls.

Other than the obvious aesthetic success, how is your water quality (nitrate & phosphate specifically)? Do you do "regular" water changes?

I've been busy with a public aquarium project in Krakow, Poland for the past year, so I haven't had time to spend on any of the aquarium forums. I've got some time off now so I hope to get back into the community again.

[BigRagu2]

WOW, I'm setting up after a few years away and find this a great blend of "Old & New" concepts and II can't wait to try it!

Thanks Mr. Wilson and the others that have helped establish these methods.

BigRagu2

[BigRagu2]

WOW, I'm setting up after a few years away and find this a great blend of "Old & New" concepts and II can't wait to try it!

Thanks Mr. Wilson and the others that have helped establish these methods.

BigRagu2

[JACOXVIII]

ok just about to set up my new 75g sump/fuge for my 155bow front
overflow line from the tank are 2 1"lines return pump is mag12 danner
so if i read right i only need 1 solid baffle in the first skimmer area
i think i will go 14" tall
then make a egg crate platform
then a egg crate baffle to keep cheato or calurpa from the return
pump
so no baffled area for filter pads or carbon

but what makes the water want to flow threw the benthic
if the water is just running over the top

[token]

Originally posted by JACOXVIII
but what makes the water want to flow threw the benthic
if the water is just running over the top

If the water is flowing over the benthic, it will also get into the benthic, probably at the rate that works best for a benthic. Water will follow the path of least resistance, but that path won't be available to all the water so some will move through the benthic zone.

HTH!

Good luck!

[ctaylor76]

has anyone tried this on a biocube 29? I havent been able to find anyone who has made a sump for the stand yet. I'm about to add a HOB fuge, I guess I could try this idea out on that, but I'll need to get a dark zone in there somewhere. I have a new stand I built . It's alot beefer than the BC29 stand. I'll have to try and find a tall tank to do this with, so I have more room if power goes out. Anyone have any ideas to add on my issue?
Jake

[tasos]

Hello, everyone!Sorry I didn't post any photos,but I can contribute by telling you my conclusions.
First of all the chaeto and caulerpa did very well in controling the P and N in my system.
There was not any benthic or cryptic life under the eggcrate.Only fragments of chaeto that fell, and my little brittle stars.There where many calcareus tubeworms before the benthic zone to the glass of the compartment that recieved the overflow water.Also many sponges on the LR inside the main tank.I think that it would be better if I made the system with just lot of LR in the sump.

[mr.wilson]

One thing I noticed with a few eggcrate benthic zones, is that there was a greater amount of organisms in the initial (sediment settling) section. This are gets stronger flow, and is nutrient rich, so opportunistic inverts set-up camp there first.

I find that overflows are quite rich in many inverts, as it has the highest concentration of nutrients. Overflows are also dark, so there are no photosynthetic organisms (such as algae) to compete with.

Seeding is another aspect that needs to be fine tuned. If you have "clean" macro algae to start your refugium, or a very small starter culture, it will not have sufficient hitchhikers to seed a well populated benthic zone. Using small rocks at the base of the refugium will help anchor macro algae down until it attaches and provide adequate hitchhikers to populate all regions of the eggcrate below.

Time will eventually allow the entire eggcrate structure to be populated, but it will slowly grow, starting at the beginning of the path (settling zone near skimmer). Just like a city is populated, benthic inverts will slowly move out to the "suburbs" (deeper into the eggcrate structure), as the "downtown core" (settling zone) becomes overpopulated, and food becomes more scarce.

The continual breakdown of macro algae provides detrital nutrients for benthic inverts below. You could use rock in place of the eggcrate structure with success. A good experiment would be to use a few rocks in the benthic zone and see how populated they are compared to the neighbouring eggcrate. You would have to exclude any inverts that were likely to have started out on the rocks before being added to the benthic zone.

It's also possible that another media that is somewhere between the parameters of rock and eggcrate, such as (submerged) bioballs would be more efficient (ie. more surface area). The downside is that you would lose the ability to siphon away detritus, and the flow/nutrient supply would be greatly diminished in some areas. Live rock would only be efficient if it was small pieces, as the core serves no purpose in this zone. The problem with small pieces is they stack tightly, so you would lose most of the surface area.

There doesn't appear to be any benefit to a calcareous (calcium-based) media in the benthic zone. The system has ample sand and rock for chemical requirements such as buffering, and the benthic inverts seem to be just as happy on plastic.

Another worthwhile experiment would be to use a more significant number of rows of eggcrate. This would not effect flow or access for cleaning that much. The only thing to keep in mind is the amount of room sponges and tunicates (sea squirts) need to avoid competition from neighbours.

I'm looking forward to hearing more reports good, bad or indifferent.

[JACOXVIII]

in my new 75 fuge/sump
it has a glass baffle between the skimmer and fuge is that ok

[mr.wilson]

The baffle helps detritus settle as it reaches the sump. This way you can siphon it out before it gets trapped in the benthic or refugium zones. It also allows you to use a protein skimmer to move new incoming water from the first section to the refugium side. By doing this, you make sure all water reaching the sump goes through the protein skimmer.

Running the drain from the display tank to the sump through the protein skimmer is even more efficient but requires extra plumbing (emergency overflow & valves) and engineering to assure you aren't compromising skimmer efficiency. Some protein skimmer designs don't work well with a drain feed.

[sjm817]

Wow, this is crazy. I was looking at my fuge setup and was thinking it would a good idea to divide the fuge horizontally. I was going to make a thread here and what do you know, here is one already!

As the diagram below depicts, my sump is a 75G and the fuge is a 65G and is separate. Both are in the basement.

The fuge is fed from a T in the return line, then drains back to the sump. Right now, the fuge has only Chaeto in it. No rock or substrate. It is lit by a pair of 36" 6500K T5 HOs. The fuge is 24" high and I was thinking I could make better use of the space. My idea was to load up the bottom 1/2 of the fuge with LR. Put some sort of a horizontal plate over it that would keep the Chaeto from getting tangled up in the rock for easy maintenance. I've had LR rubble before and that was a pain.

For the divider, I was thinking just a sheet of eggcrate and then tie some gutter guard to it to make it a finer screening.

Any thoughts on this plan?

[mr.wilson]

The plan looks great. Many of the features you have planned are the same as what I use.

Running the refugium off of the return line cuts back on unnecessary flow through the display tank so your plan will give you more efficient surface skimming and quieter drains. It will also give you a chance to mechanically pre-filter water before it reaches the refugium.

Matching the flow of the Mak 4 to the display with the skimmer flow rate will assure that all water going into the filtration system passes through the skimmer. This only works if your proposed divider is water-tight and doesn't let water processed by the skimmer get back into the skimmer (ie. the skimmer effluent directs water over the divider.

One minor drawback is that micro plankton will not easily make it into the display tank with your current design. Header tanks are the only way to assure a safe journey for beneficial nutrients to the display tank and they're hard to position above the tank with most cabinets and lighting. They also require pumps with greater head pressure and may introduce bubbles into the tank. Having the refugium drain into the sump instead of the skimmer section will increase your chances of feeding the tank with live food (plankton won't get removed by the protein skimmer).

Other than that, it's pretty straight forward. Let us know if you come up with any new ideas or direction.

[sjm817]

Thanks.

What is shown has been running for over 2 years. Directing the skimmer output over the baffle would be a problem since it would create a huge amount of bubbles in the the return section of the sump. I have a very powerful skimmer and comfortable with the efficiency of it the way it is set up.

The skimmer output and the fuge output are positioned just before the baffle toward the return and away from the skimmer intake, so most of it goes to to the return section. I can extend the fuge output so that it goes to the return section after the baffles since the flow is far less than what the skimmer processes and wont cause bubble problems.

My question and the only design change I'm looking at is going from a BB chaeto only fuge to a horizontally divided rock/chaeto fuge. Does filling up the bottom 1/2 of the fuge with LR and using a tight screen above it for the divider sound ok? The water flow will come in just below the surface and obviously, the overflow is surface as well. There wont be much water movent at all below the divider. This is OK?

[mr.wilson]

Sorry, I thought it was a new plan. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Any change in substrate would depend on how well your chaeto is growing. If it fills the whole refugium and grows rapidly, then I would stick with what you have. If you feel you could get enough nutrient export with half the growing area for one reason or another, then I would go with the rock and mesh platform idea and use the lower half for another filtration method.

I find macro algae grows better in shallow areas, but I use mostly caulerpa sps.. You may find different growing conditions for chaetomorpha or gracileria. I know some people like to grow it in large clumps and rotate them with water flow, but it sounds like yours is static/stationary.

[sjm817]

It does well, but keeping it rotating is pretty much impossible when there is a large mass in a rectangular box.

My thought is I can grow a sufficient amount in the top 1/2. I still would have to manually rotate it now and then. The idea is to gain the different type of filtration from the lower area that would be filled with LR and for the most part, be dark, and to also have a better environment for pod production.

[screwsloose]

i cannot get the videos to load but i get the gist of the design and am going to implement it on my new system. i plan on running a dsb in my sump as the bottom layer of the duplex but i have a couple questions. do i put an eggcrate directly onto the sadn bed to catch detrious or elevate the first eggcrate above it? how far down do i put the feeding tube into the dsb and should it come all the way out of the sump for gas release? i pan on layering mine three deep. layer one would be dsb, layer two is rubble rock on crate, layer three would be calarpa which will later be tang food. is this the ideal set up?

hers a pic of my tank i am building. sump is 200 gl's so room is not a problem. i also have 100 lbs of crushed coral. can i use this successfully somewhere in this design?

[DeathWish302]

I've read the entire thread but have a few questions. I'm rebuilding my sump due to detritus build-up in the 'fuge section. My 'fuge is seperate from the main sump 'loop' and is slow flowing (~150-200gph). This has created a detritus trap regardless of the nassarius snails, crabs & worms in the 'fuge. They cannot turn over the sand fast enough. So I have decided to remove the DSB, as it has no where near the activity as the main display. This is apparent by the lack of bubbles forming on the tank walls. The main display has ~2" and has 10 times the activity.

Questions are as follows:

1) If I'm trying to remove the 'detritus trap', why should I not be concerned with the eggcrate section becoming another trap? I know it's been stated some build-up is ok but the amount produced in a normal tank cannot be processed by the small amount of benthic animals in the 2nd zone. Do xenia eat a portion of the detritus?

2) If you were to use xenia in place of the aiptasia, would you not have to light the 'aiptasia zone'? I've never personally kept the 'pest' in my tank, so I'm not familiar with the exact needs. I read in E. Bornemann's coral book that should be kept under intense lighting. Can they survive under a 13W daylight fluorescent flood lamp? If not, I may try putting these in the coast-to-coast overflow and place a serpent star and some crabs in the 'aiptasia zone'.

3) My main sump is filled with sponges and calcareous tube worms right now, so I understand the possible benefit of these creatures. What would you say is the minimum benthic zone size to be advantageous? I will likely have only 10-12" of space (in a 20L) for this zone and plan to have eggcrate every 1". Will this be nearly enough space? The area on top the eggcrate will definitely suit the algae growth.

I'm just questioning this method working with a 20L and a skimmer that takes up about half the sump. The aiptasia I'm not thrilled about, and the xenia scares me if it starts moving quickly. The eggcrate section just seems like a trap for algae fragments and detritus. I question a systems capcbility of processing such a large volume of waste in such a tiny area. Maybe the power of the benthic animals and the xenia/aiptasia/star polyps are more than I realize....

Thanks,
DW302

[gaspar]

First off: screwsloose that is one beautiful sump design rendition! Nice work!

Link to the vedio is here: http://www.reefvideos.com/


Gaspar has finally figured out how to resize photos using PhotoShop
and has a couple of questions for our esteemed Mr. Wilson and anyone
else contributing to this great thread.

We will try some photos:



This is the 40 gallon display tank after six months








And here is the BZ sump after six months




Well, we will keep working on posting bigger photos...



This is a close up of the benthic zone. The dark red threads
were tied in there to check water flow in various areas.

Not much growing after six months...



And here is my originasl sketch for the BZ sump

I ended up dividing the benthic zone area almost in half to make room
for a deep sand base area and incorporating a display tank over flow.

Nitrate levels are consistantly zero and so are nitrites. Low range
phosphate .01/.02, High range ph 8.8 and ammonia stays zero.

Fans running in the sump and in the display tank hood evaporate
almost a gallon of water per day. [!] I do a ten gallon water change
once a week and replace the evaporated water with distilled R.O..

So all is well. Corals are healthy, mostly holding their own but not
really growing. This is probably because I almost never turn on the
main lighting and just run the two atenics about six hours every
evening. I prefer the softer light and it seems that any time I run
the main lights there is very noticable alge increase the next day.

All in all pretty amazing for rarely running anything but atenics.

Any thoughts on all this? I would definately like to see more 'critters'
down in the benthic zone and wonder if the sand bed is really doing
any good. Thanks again for inspiring this interesting and so far
thumbs up 'Duplex Sump' project.

It has come a long way from here:


And we are even getting the photo resizing figured out!

[screwsloose]

so in theory it would be better to run a deep sand bed before or after the duplex and not under it or would it matter?

[JACOXVIII]

ok just got my 75 fuge/sump done and up & running

got a new vertex in250 skimmer
my old skimmer is 4=yr old and full of worms sponges and aiptasia

i still have the old skimmer running water threw it
what do you think will happen if i shut it of will i have big problems in the main tank
do i run it till the lower level of the fuge is seeded

[mr.wilson]

Good plan, great drawing "Screwloose". What drawing program do you use? The perfect set up is not known to me, but I will list a few things that I would personally implement or change. I'm not here to talk anyone out of their own idea, as it may have it's own merits. This is just how I do it, for what it's worth.

1) Raise the stand a few inches for better access to the sump and viewing of the display. Perhaps it's personal preference, but I like the stand to be at least 36" high for aquariums that are viewed from a sitting position and 42" for ones that are commonly viewed while standing. Once again, it's a personal choice. You will have problems fitting lighting, possible addition of mangrove trees or sea grass, and still be able to reach all areas of the refugium for servicing and harvesting.

2) Using the protein skimmer to move incoming water from the first (settling) compartment to the refugium area will assure that all water going through the sump will pass through the skimmer, and it will only do so once. It seems like a minor difference, but the skimmer will receive only fresh surfactant-rich water that has been skimmed from your display tank, and it will not process the same water over and over. This can add up to an exponential difference, and one that comes at no cost.

3) The feeding/breathing tube idea is yet to be proven, but an idea I still like in theory. It certainly causes no negative effect, and is another cheap modification. I would use a series of vertical tubes and have them extend to the surface for gas release/exchange. It will act in many ways like a Jaulbert plenum system, without the detritus buildup and unknown content and condition of buried levels.

4) Going three layers deep, is probably over optimistic. A 200 gallon sump seems big, but you would be surprised how quickly it fills with equipment and various zones. It would only work if you had a shallow sand bed, and modest benthic zone. The reasons I have designed the duplex filtration system is for this purpose, to stack several zones within a small footprint. I have found that the equipment required to run a reef tank exceeds the area under the display tank, in the cabinet. If you have a large work area or basement, you could employ the same practices (refugium, benthic zone, settling zone, aiptasia zone, chemical filtration (carbon, & ion exchange resin) zone, and mechanical filtration zone). The same zones could exist in greater proportion with marginal increase in cost. For example, you could use food grade 55 gallon drums/barrels to make a benthic zone or deep and bed. They cost only $10 used or $50 new, and the flow rate and subsequent equipment cost would stay the same. The other benefit of a large work area is you can greatly increase your system volume. You could use as many drums as you can fit.

5) I use one larger overflow box located at the end of the aquarium. If you direct water across the top toward the overflow, you can constantly surface skim with no dead spots (areas where film develops on surface or food collects). I do a flake food test on new tanks to test my flow dynamics. I add a healthy portion of flake food and monitor where it goes and how long it takes to be surface skimmed. Proper flow will skim almost all of the flakes within 30 seconds, with only a few escaping capture as they sink below the surface. A poorly designed system will leave dead spots or sink most of the flakes. Using one overflow at the end of the tank "down stream" will give you maximum surface tension. Never direct a water return away from the overflow drain. It will cause your surface skimmer to draw water from below the surface. The water near the skimmer box should be still, so it has greater surface tension and skims more surfactants. Once the tank is full of water, play with your flow dynamics (patterns etc.) for a few hours. Make sure you can keep detritus suspended and skimmed so corals can feed and filtration can remove it. These small adjustments are free and make a huge difference on the outcome of your tank.

6) Crushed coral is useful wherever you can fit it. Just rinse it very well.