Aquarium sumps are the small tanks where you house the filter media for mechanical, biological and chemical filtration. Sumps are often used with the marine (or reef) aquariums that doesn’t mean that we cannot use them with freshwater aquariums. I often recommend using sumps when you have a 200 gallon aquarium or more in volume.
There are several components of a pump in order to work properly.
- Drainage
- Mechanical and chemical filtration chamber
- Biological filtration chamber
- Additional equipment chamber (if you’re feeling fancy)
- Return pump
How do sumps work?
Aquarium sumps work like any other commercial filter. Their aim is to filter the aquarium water by passing them through a number of filter media.
The very first chamber is the chamber for mechanical filtration. Dirty water from the aquarium is overflown into a filter sock or a sponge or any other filter media that does the mechanical filtration. Filter media in this chamber will catch any solid particles in the water and the water will move to the next chamber.
We call this next chamber: the equipment chamber where you house a header, UV-sterilizer etc. so that you don’t have to do in the aquarium itself. Once the water is heated, it’ll overflow to the next chamber in which the chemical filtration occurs.
Water will move through activated carbon and peat with the help of an air stone. Activated carbon and peat will help remove the bad odor of the aquarium and help clarify the water. Once it reaches to a certain height, the water will overflow into the next chamber where you house the bio balls for biological filtration. At the end of the process, you house a power head (motor or a pump) to push the water back into the aquarium.
Benefits of Aquarium Sumps
There are several benefits of using an aquarium sumps. The main ones are –
- You hide the filter and all the equipment in a closed cabinet, just like a canister filter
- You don’t need to intervene with the aquarium itself when running a maintenance and that’s why it’s easier to do maintenance.
- Your aquarium will actually circulate more water considering the amount that’s in the aquarium sump.
What size aquarium sump do I need?
A good rule of thumb is to choose a sump that gives 1:3 or 1:4 size ratio. For example, if you have a 100 gallon tank, the sump size should be at least 25 gallon. We recommend that the bigger is the better but you also need to fit it in the aquarium cabinet to hide it. You should pick wisely by measuring the space you have.
We also recommend that you do not fill your sump to the rim. It’s best to leave 25% of the sump volume empty incase of an emergency. These emergencies might include –
- Power head (motor) breaking and not able to pump the water to the aquarium
- Power outage
- Filter media getting clogged and not being able to pass water throughly
When any of these emergencies occur, safety zone of the sump will be used instead of sump overflowing and flooding your home.