TaeKwonDude Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 I'm sure that this idea has had to cross somebody's mind before, but I just had a thought of how to alleviate the concern of "if my pump shuts off, my sump will get flooded"...what if we reverse the setup and have the sump in a cabinet above the tank...this way it is your tank that would get "flooded" and only with what is in the last chamber of the sump... there are only 2 concerns that I can come up with...1)cabinet needs to be able to support the weight of the sump 2)there would not be a power head on the return line to the tank... any thoughts to this idea?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pledosophy Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Called a gravity fed refugium Drawback is you have to have a pump in your display tank now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaeKwonDude Posted April 7, 2009 Author Share Posted April 7, 2009 if your tank has a built in overflow...you can just hide it in there... thanks...so i was right, i'm not the first to think of this...prob. an idea that's been around for a while, huh... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dsoz Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Just have your sump not completely full. Then when the power goes out, the extra water just fills up the sump. You should have it set up so that the whole tank does not drain into the sump, only the small amount that is in your overflow and some from a siphon from the return (until the siphon breaks). That totals about 5 gallons or less in my 75g tank. I can easily have my sump 3/4 full, and it will still hold all the water that gets sucked out of my tank when I shut the pump off. I have thought of having a refugium higher than the tank, and have it gravity fed back into the tank. That way any pods don't need to traverse a pump to get into my tank. The downside is that there needs to be a pump in my tank. On the other hand... If there was a second, small, powerhead in the sump that went up to the upper refugium, then gravity feed into the tank, then gravity fed back to the sump. It would give a small amount of circulation, and the benefits of a refugium... There would be two paths for water to take. Sump -> tank -> sump and Sump -> refugium -> tank -> sump. I wonder what the ramifications of a setup like this would be? dsoz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaeKwonDude Posted April 7, 2009 Author Share Posted April 7, 2009 There would be two paths for water to take. Sump -> tank -> sump and Sump -> refugium -> tank -> sump. dsoz interesting idea, multipathing...I saw an acrylic sump box at waves that had 2 entrance chambers contained in the same box... 1)tank -> junk catch sock chamber -> sump main chamber -> tank 2)tank -> small fuge chamber -> sump main chamber -> tank I guess kinda same thing, just in one box... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mltnguyen Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 TaeKwonDude I am in Hillsboro as well. If you would like to come over and take alook at my setup you are more then welcome. Just shoot me a PM and we can go from there. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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