Hello from Graham

dawgwe1 2010-10-01, 17:51

Hi there - new to the web site. Currently have a well established 75g freshwater tank with some 6 year old silver dollars and bala sharks. Also has some newer black skirt tetras and giant danios. Use to have a nice salter water set up a long time ago - about 16 years ago!!! Lost power for a week in a winter wind storm and lost the whole tank. Hung up the hobby for a decade.

I am looking at getting another salt tank going and it seems things have changed over the last 16 years!!! Seems most people are doing a sump system with a secondary tank below the aquarium used for the skimmer and filter system. I am looking at possibly doing this but have a few questions. I have a glass tank and do not want to drill holes so I would use a syphon type system to get the water from the aquarium down to the sump tank. My first question is how do you set up the pump that returns the water to the main aquarium. It seems it would be nearly impossible to get the pump to flow at the exact same rate the water is being syphoned down to the sump. If the pump is too fast then all of the water would be pumped out of the sump tank and if too slow the sump tank would overflow. It seems a lot of people are doing this so there must be a way to do this.....

My second question is the order of equipment in the sump tank. Seems most have the water going into the sump tank going through the protein skimmer first and then into the filter system. Is this best? Also where is the best place to put the heater - in the aquarium or in the sump?

Thanks in advance to any replies....

Wayne

sandnuka 2010-10-01, 19:04

hey and welcome to WFB... looks like you already got the hang of asking questions! lol.... I know there is several ways to do what you want too.... actually there is a member on here that just setup his with a syphon (overflow) system similar to the one your explaining.... I will let him explain how it works because i have the more traditional system with the holes in the tank...

Anyway, welcome to the site, you will probably get a better response if we posted this question in the aquarium equipment section.... let me know if you want me to move it, you would have to make a new introduction though Smile