55 gallon sump

[raycityboy1]

Because of my newly placed 1600 Watts of MH and fans, I am having to add water to my tank at a tiresome rate. I am adding 5 gallons every other day if not daily, whereas it used to consume about a gallon a day and every 5 days or so I'd add water. This has encouraged me to turn my empty 55 gallon tank into a sump much sooner than I would have liked. I had been putting this off b/c the 125 gallon tank has to be drained and removed in order to get the 55 gallon tank into the stand. I thought a 55 gallon sump design would be quite common and easy to find because they are so cheap and so readily available, but I am not having any luck on the internet. Perhaps I am just not looking in the right places, or maybe I am expected to design this on my own (in which case I am in trouble).

Does anyone know where I might find an effective sump design for a 4 ft 55 gallon tank??

Thanks in advance,

Chris

[ReefNeck]

Originally Posted by raycityboy1

Because of my newly placed 1600 Watts of MH and fans, I am having to add water to my tank at a tiresome rate. I am adding 5 gallons every other day if not daily, whereas it used to consume about a gallon a day and every 5 days or so I'd add water. This has encouraged me to turn my empty 55 gallon tank into a sump much sooner than I would have liked. I had been putting this off b/c the 125 gallon tank has to be drained and removed in order to get the 55 gallon tank into the stand. I thought a 55 gallon sump design would be quite common and easy to find because they are so cheap and so readily available, but I am not having any luck on the internet. Perhaps I am just not looking in the right places, or maybe I am expected to design this on my own (in which case I am in trouble).

Does anyone know where I might find an effective sump design for a 4 ft 55 gallon tank??

Thanks in advance,

Chris

www.melevsreef.com

[raycityboy1]

Thanks Reefneck. I scoured the equipment section of RC'c Photo gallery last night and I saw several pics and schematics. I found a few threads here and there that pointed me in the direction of Melevsreef. I am now much more informed today than I was yesterday.

I went to Lowes last night and priced my materials.

I hope to get a rough schematic posted today if I have time, so some of the more experienced sump gooroos may take a look and revise as necc. I haven't found a 55 gallon sump I want to copy completely so I want to ensure my version will work. I was going to put another fuge in the sump in addition to my stand alone fuge. I am leaning away from this idea b/c my goal here is to maximize resevoir space in the sump so there may be more time between top offs.

I would love to get an auto top off system running but there is something wrong with my RO/DI system and I have been on the horn with thefilterguys for weeks trying all different things to straighten the problem out. Just one day it stopped producing water. I changed all the filters and the DI as recommended...nothing. I was then told to put it on a dedicated 1/4" water line. I did and still no improvement. The only thing left to change is the membrane which they swear it cannot be that b/c the system has only been running since March. My municipal water source is darn near hazardous, so I don't doubt that the membrane could be spent. For the time being, I have omitted the membrane and the DI is doing the heaviest part of the filtering with a final TDS of 0. I know this will kill my DI resin faster but I have unlimited access to DI resin b/c I use it in my shop. This is all I know to do to keep the water coming while the problem gets fixed.