Maintenance Free Sumps??

[malawi500]

It appears a lot of us running sumps myself included use filter socks pre bio media, and change these out every few days/weekly.

Now the idea is simple, our aim is to remove the solid waste before it decays and breaks down. Now if we keep on top of water changes is this really a concern the waste breaking down?

Can we not design a sump that has some form of settling chamber, maybe something similar to the Eheim pro 2 canisters:

Settling chamber > Ehfimech > Sponge > Ceramic Media > Return

This way we essentially allow the larger waste to break down etc. with no need to remove filter socks or floss etc etc.

Thoughts??

 

[johnny roastbeef]

Sure you could do that, but how would you drain it? The drain would logically be on the bottom of the sump, how would you drain anything that is at floor level. For your concept to work, you would have to have your sump raised high enough that you could get a bucket or pan underneath it. Thats very impractical and would reduce the capacity of the sump, or require the sump to be large. easier still is to just drain the sump during a water change and clean it out with a towel or use a vacuum of some kind.

 

[malawi500]

or have a pump on a bulkhead at the side?

or not even remove it just let it break down and work it's way through the coarse > fine foam or whatever? That's what happens in canisters after all?



I'm thinking:

Settling area
1" 10 PPI foam
1" 30 PPI foam
1" 45 PPI foam

Fit and forget? Maybe clean the foams every few months?

 

[joe jaskot]

A lot of the waste in a fish tank is in liquid form. So just removing the solid waste is not the solution. Fish expel ammonia through their gills as they breathe.

 

[malawi500]

that's why I said if water changes are kept on top of is there any need to remove solid waste prior to it being broken down?

 

[Fishbrains]

A lot of the waste in a fish tank is in liquid form. So just removing the solid waste is not the solution. Fish expel ammonia through their gills as they breathe.

ammonia is handled through the biomedia in the sump. That is a non factor in this equation. I am very interested in this idea! Keep thinking out loud!!!

 

[Drstrangelove]

If one isn't changing sock filters once they are clogged, I'm not seeing the purpose of having them.

For me, they remove suspended particles that will clog smaller micron filters and remove debris that will reduce the efficiency of bio media. They help in trapping debris in water that will try to make it's way through a UV filter, through purigen, Matrix etc. Not cleaning them defeats both of these purposes. WC is not an efficient method of removing suspended particles and does nothing to remove debris from clogged bio media.

Pre filtering water going to the bio media is efficient and easy.

 

[David R]

I used to run a settling chamber on my 800L tank to help deal with the sawdust from my royal plec, worked well but certainly still required cleaning, in one week there would be about 10mm of sawdust/crap settled on the bottom of the tank!

I was thinking about setting something like this for my big tank but not sure if I'll have the space. What would be ideal is a specifically designed container with a tapered base and a drain in the bottom so you can easily clean it instead of siphoning, but I am yet to find such a thing here.

 

[malawi500]

drstrangelove you make some valid points but...

1. At what micron rating does debris start to clog ceramic media and reduce their efficiency? Surely a 45 ppi sponge would suffice to stop clogging and nothing a 6 or 12 monthly rinse of the bio media wouldn't resolve?

2. Canister filters certainly do their job and the biomedia doesn't really require cleaning?

 

[Drstrangelove]

Good questions.

1) Many people report that sock filters can clog readily at 50 microns. If I remember, Seachem reported that they aim for their matrix to have pore sizes of somewhere between 1 and 10 microns. http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Matrix.html Let's say that 45 PPI sponge operates at 20 microns. (The actual PPI and sizes are actually not important to this next point.) So, it seems (to me anyway) that there is an issue if large amounts of material in the 10 to 1000+ micron size is being routed into matrix bio media. Some amounts in the 10-20 micron stage will probably not overwhelm the media.

What value is it if there is no filtration prior to the 20 micron sponge such that the sponge is clogged? One of the purposes of the 250 or 100 micron sock filter is to keep the 20 micron sponge relatively clear so that it can do what it needs to do: trap particles in the 20-100 micron stage to keep the bio material clear, as opposed to trapping 200-1000+ micron sized particles because the sock filter is over flowing. In my mind, each stage of mechanical filtration is dependent upon the prior stage operating effectively.

Each successive stage is not an 'extra' step, a 'safeguard' or a 'fall back'. Each successive stage is designed to be finer in particle filtration and will clog faster that it should if the prior stages are left to their own devices. To paraphrase folks about filter socks, the difference in time between a 250 micron sock and a 50 micron sock in clogging is unmistakable.

Clearing the sock filter routinely keeps the 20 micron sponge relatively clear for long stretches of time, which keeps the bio media clear for long stretches of time. Letting the first stage clog, dumps problems into the next stage which due to pore size is likely to clog at a much faster rate.


2) Canisters are different animals altogether from a gravty fed system in terms of oxygen, flow pressure, and ease of cleaning. Since we are talking about how to eliminate maintenance in a sump, I don't know how to compare sumps to canisters as a means to support changes to sumps. Im open to the comparison, but I don't see your point yet.