Another Sump Questions Thread - With A Twist!

[Kittiee Katt]

Hi all! I'm back with another stupid sump question... This time its about my mini sump!

I've been told its pointless putting baffles in it because if how small it is, but the picture in my head has a baffle in the middle of it and I love the picture in my head, its so cute!

Well I rang some glass places a couple of weeks ago and a tiny bit of 10x13cm glass is going to cost more than I'd like to spend on a tiny baffle... So I'm wondering, can I cut up and use a plastic kitchen board for a baffle? At $2-$5 its much cheaper than glass...

Or should I just not bother with the baffle? The tank this sump will be filtering won't have fish so it doesn't need to be overly efficient.

Also, I should actually be able to start on these soon! Give it 2-3 weeks and I should have something started!... Maybe... Hopefully...

 

[Loginthesand]

In my experience sumps are problematic when they dont follow the standard central refugium layout. Personally I have made several diy sumps and none worked.out for me the way it looked in my head. Two years ago I bought an fx 6 and never looked back. No more sucking noise when the sump level gets too low. No chance of blockage resulting in overflow. Canisters are easily removed from the tank to outside for cleaning. You dont ever have to put your hands into them.
Yep I have used plastic for baffles they tend to flex and pull away feom silicon as it does not stick well to the plastic.

 

[Kittiee Katt]

In my experience sumps are problematic when they dont follow the standard central refugium layout. Personally I have made several diy sumps and none worked.out for me the way it looked in my head. Two years ago I bought an fx 6 and never looked back. No more sucking noise when the sump level gets too low. No chance of blockage resulting in overflow. Canisters are easily removed from the tank to outside for cleaning. You dont ever have to put your hands into them.
Yep I have used plastic for baffles they tend to flex and pull away feom silicon as it does not stick well to the plastic.

Ahh. That sucks about the plastic. $25 for a tiny bit of glass it is.

The mini sump will just be two chambers, the water will go into the side with mechanical (likely floss) and exit the side with bio (likely ceramic). I think I'm going to try and make the mini sump first so I know what I'm doing before potentially making a huge mess with a larger one.

We have canisters already and cleaning them is a b*tch, they're awkward to carry, hard to get out from under our stupid stands without smacking it into the side of the cupboard and scaring the fish (my dollars crap themselves and go stupid when this happens) and on top of all that, once they start getting above a certain size they start getting rather heavy and I'm a sook haha

About the fx6, I've never seen a fluval canister down here and if I did, I'd expect it to be in the $700 range, the eheim ones are between $700 and $1200 so I assume the fluvals would be similarly priced, and I'm not wealthy enough to be able to spend $700+ on a filter just yet lol