[carisma02uk]

heres my sugested set up,
a quick paint i threw together,

i need to know what size pump i will need to return the water safley with out flooding or drying out my sump.

i will be toping up the sump with a gravity fed system i.e.
a toilet float valve system as the water drops the gate opens and the water from a LFS R/O water tank is gravity fed down and so on.
i will be heating this too.

the sump will be a gravity fed syphon to fill and a pumped retrun.
5ft both drop and rise.
the sump contains 2 sections
section 1: a DSB and live rock (mini-reef setup)
section 2: bioballs and a pump for return.
i will be housing the tank and sump like this both on show with a mini-reef set in in the sump section 1:

 

[thePACK]

looks very good..can you tell me how many gallons is your setup going to be?

 

[-=BOB=-]

Lets see where to begin with....sump! Sump is a fairly simple device if you understand whys and how's..
First of all you need a drilled tank!! something like this:

In pic above you see that drilled holes are separated from the rest of the tank with glass wall, another pic:

that wall creating so called overflow (water flows over it to chamber trough witch is falling into sump)
In sump you have powerful pump (return pump) which is trowing water back to the display..All water above level of overflow box falls back again and so circules.... Nice fact in given scenario is that if your pump fails for some reason, sump wont be flooded cause only extra water in overflow chamber and pipes is going to end up there Thats why sump never shouldn't be filled till top (to take water in pipes in a count).. Thats how it works.. You don't need any toilet float valves or something, the system I explained above is best and safest solution
my display:

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if you understand thinks above we can go further, otherwise say so
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i need to know what size pump i will need

by now we know that you wont be flooding your sump... flow rate depends mostly of the inhabitants you wanna have... some organisms like SPS corals require higher one than let's say soft corals.. However we can globally say that flow rate needs to be between 10 and 20 time of tank size in a hour..

You don't need UV if you don't run really powerful lighting (like HQI 400watt or something)

Dependable on filtration method people have different sump designs, and some of them just can fight the pressure of complicate it with many chambers and f*ck knows what...
if you take a look at my sump:

its just another aquarium below my main tank... nothing more, on the left side water comes from the display

and on the right side is return pump that pumps it back up....

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thats it
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If you like to run a sump with refiugium there are plenty of designs possible
here is one of them

It would be much better to put strong skimm instead of bio balls, they are getting less popular, people say they are nitrate traps..

 

[carisma02uk]

cheers whai was i thinking of is a syphon system so i dont need to drill the tank.
and the tank is 150gallons and the sump 60gal,

the uv will be on for one day a week as i will slow the tanks flow rate down so that the protien skimmers can make the 2minutes contcat they need will some of the stronger forms of organics.

my first sump design was the same as yours but set up like this:

heres a link to my others posts on ultimatereef.com
its got all my specs on it.
tickle me pls

i still need to know of a good pump that will return the water 5ft high and not flood my tank.

 

[cruzeoc]

well thats vertualy the same setup i have apart from the skimmer (i have a hangon in the sump) dont use bio balls nothing but trouble anything with bio in it should be avoided you can use a syphon system they are good you can find some good designs at kingvinnies and i found that if you do connect it to the powerhead that way it doesnt lose suction and will never dry out also i have 1 large heater hidden in my main tank just incase the sump stops working just for saftey

 

[carisma02uk]

cheers chap i am currently working on a principle i have learnt in the koi trade all knock you up a quick daigram asap.

 

[carisma02uk]

HERE you go.
ok a quick explination.

the gray is pipe work with many hole driled into it for an equal suchion area.
it will be wraped in a fine filter foam and have a deep sand bed ontop so the ingflow enters and then is sucked out via the pump and bakc to the tank.
what do you think.
this way you dont get and stagent parts in you sump circulation.

 

[cruzeoc]

i personaly think it's a bad idea thats basically an undergravel filter and there not good why dont you baffle of a section where the water enters the sump it filters through a bit of fine wool the goes into the main part then over a nother baffle to the return pump ?? if you cant baffle it (put bits of glass in there to section it off) then get a bit of wide pipe (clear) the make the water run through that