Overflow aquarium setup

Most commonly, a sump setup will be sold as a kit with biomedia. You can use this or a simple plain aquarium and add your own media. Sumps are filled using gravity with a pump to return water to the tank.

You will need appropriate hoses to move the water back and forth from your tank. It is recommended that you employ a skimmer box to cycle water in between your tank and sump. This will decrease the pull off the outflow to prevent animals from being sucked into the sump.

It also acts as a fail-safe to protect your sump from accidentally draining your tank. Ideally, you should set up your outflow and inflow in opposing spots so it creates a gyre in your tank.

Connect tubing between overflow skimmer to sump inflow. If you are making your own sump without a kit, inflow from the tank should come into one side of the tank and return on the opposite side. Ideally, your inflow should cover the top of the tank and the outflow collects water from the bottom after it flows over the biological filter media you have chosen. Setup your return hoses from the sump pump to return water from the sump to the tank.

If you lose power, your sump will have to hold the extra water in the lines and any additional water that is pulled via gravity. Keep the return hose close to the top of your water line in your main tank. If you lose power or your pump fails, this way it will not drain your tank. This is also why you should place air pumps above your tank. Choose a sump size and fill line to accommodate any accidents. Position the return so it flows through the tank before reaching the outflow.

If your outflow is too close to the return to your sump, you are not filtering the entire volume of your tank. This is not the same type of sump pump that keeps your basement dry! Most kits will have an appropriate size pump to match the flow of gravity from the skimmer basket and tubing size selected.

If you are making your own, it is critical to match the flow of gravity to the pump return. Still, its not really a good idea to run an open drain by itself because of the lack of failsafes. These are all single-pipe methods and a variation of the same idea. Take an open pipe, submerge the inlet opening, then vent air through the top. Unfortunately an unregulated siphon causes havoc as the pipe fills with water, then rapidly purges.

This will go on over and over again. The water in the overflow will never be constant. Hence the reason for the air vent — to prevent a siphon from forming. Although the hole vent is typically very small, a considerable amount of air is drawn through it.

The water and air mixture that travels through the pipe down into the sump mixes together vigorously. The bubbly water dumps into the sump.

When the water exits down in the sump, even more bubbles are created. The bursting bubbles result in salt spray — and salt creep on the surrounding surfaces. One shortfall of these vented drains is that they are only quiet when at the low end of their flow capacity. If you could look top down into the pipe, you would still see air in the middle of it. Once you increase the flow of water past this point, the drain begins to draw in a considerable amount of air.

The air and water mixture becomes very turbulent inside the pipe. It starts to make more noise as flow is increased. For this reason, large plumbing diameters 1. This is usually not an option on many smaller tanks. They are still very common despite the fact that they have no safety backup and are typically loud. Many people convert these types of single drain systems into siphon valve based overflow methods like the Herbie 2 pipe or Bean 3 pipe design to get more capacity and take advantage of the other benefits of a siphon system.

Siphons are silent when running and have much more capacity and safety measures than a Durso or vented drain. They also produce no bubbles. Any time you run a siphon pipe you must use an secondary emergency pipe. You are purposely constricting the flow of the drain with a siphon valve, so the emergency line must be present for a safe system. A two pipe design, consisting of a valve-controlled siphon drain and an emergency line next to it.

The siphon pipe has a valve on it — allowing for it to be balanced against the rate of flow from the return pump. This creates a consistent resting water level in the overflow. With the correct height of the standpipes and a submerged outlet, the siphon will reliably re-start when the return pump loses power, and then starts pumping again. No manual adjustment is needed. Running a trickle down the E-drain is controversial but nonetheless widely practiced.

The Herbie method is a common way to quiet down an existing overflow box with 2 standpipes present. Many times an existing return line is converted into a drain line, then the return is plumbed over the back of the aquarium. For more info Check out this page: Herbie Overflow Guide. A 3 drain overflow is often referred to as a Bean Overflow.

It is widely considered the best overflow method. The original Bean design refers to a specific implementation — a coast to coast overflow with a relatively shallow box containing the pipes. The Bean design uses the same valve-controlled siphon drain as the Herbie setup. That is where the similarities end. The second pipe acts very similar to a Durso because it is vented with an air hole — preventing that pipe from being a siphon and making it quiet.

Small variations in flow are taken up by the open channel drain. By adding a third pipe — a dry emergency drain — safety is increased. The system also gains capacity because unlike the Herbie, the open channel can take in more water than just a trickle. Because a dry emergency line is always there, there is an extra safety measure in place. For this reason it is common to see siphon inlets with no strainer a must with a Herbie and toothless overflow weirs being used with the Bean system.

In the last few years there have been a few companies making external overflow boxes out of acrylic that use a 3 standpipe overflow design. They can be installed by drilling a few holes in the tank. An external box housing the pipes is connected to a smaller overflow weir box inside of the tank with bulkheads. In general, external overflows are less ideal. They can fail much more easily and when they do fail they can easily lead to tank water overflowing your aquarium and onto the floor.

That said, many reefers have great success with them and appreciate the lower cost and the lack of need to drill through the tank wall or bottom. Internal overflows are a little more daunting since they require drilling the aquarium or purchasing a predrilled aquarium.

The benefit is a much more reliable overflow solution. It is also a much cleaner looking setup. External overflows are naturally quiet due to the siphon required to flow water over the aquarium rim.

Internal overflows can be noisy as the basic design has a standard open pipe that gurgles. There are designs that address this problem. There are three popular internal overflow designs that address the noise issue in different ways. These overflows are named after their designers, hence the somewhat unusual names. The basic premise of the Durso design is to submerge the inlet and add an exposed air inlet above the water surface to reduce noise. Sometimes a valve is included on the air inlet to better tune the overflow.

The drain pipe exit is placed below the waterline in the sump so there would be no splashing noises. The Herbie design attempts to go silent the same way the external overflow does, by going full siphon. To do this your return pump needs to be matched precisely to the flowability of the drain pipe.

Flow is matched by incorporating a valve in a drain pipe. The valve can be adjusted to limit the flow to match that of the pump. This design also includes a second normal drain standpipe as an emergency drain in the event the primary were to become clogged in some way. While the main drain pipe exit is placed below the waterline like in the Durso design, the emergency is not. This is so that it would make a prominent noise to alert you to a problem with the primary drain.

This design is a combination of the Durso and Herbie Overflows and includes all three drain pipes. One Durso Style as well as both Herbie drain pipes. The main Herbie drain is tuned to go full siphon but allow an additional amount of water to drain down the Durso drain pipe. The amount allowed to drain down the Durso pipe is just enough to allow it to adhere to the walls of the drain. These prevents any chance of gurgling and gives more latitude for fluctuations in flow without failing over to the emergency overflow.