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Sump/Fuge Design


The_Barbe-Hatten_Project

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Angel Higuera

I dont know the diminsions of your sump tank but you measured the walls/seperators at 8" high. I would make them higher to about 21/2-2" from the tanks surface. That way theres a minimal amont of water flow going over them into the next compartment(s). This reduces the flow of water which creates a better eco sytem in the fuge.

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The_Barbe-Hatten_Project

i see... well then cool... some one told me that my baffles couldn't be the same height...i dunno why yet, but i know them being the same height would keep the flow down a little... i've already built the thing, so there's no changing them now...

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Angel Higuera

Less flow means the pods/worms in the fuge have a better chance of matureing and multiplying before they are swept into the main tank where they'll be eaten.

 

also, the nutrients that cause bad algae in the water will get soaked/used up by your Chaeto thats in your fuge thus causing less bad algae in you tank. These bad nutrients need some time to be used by you Chaeto so the water will be filtered before entering you tank. The way to give the Chaeto this "time" is by reducing the fliow.

 

-Angel

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baffles should be different height. Think about it. if you had just 2 baffles of the same height....then as your water fills the first chamber, and then starts to fill the middle chamber...then it will keep rising and eventually your water level will be way above both baffles. So the baffles really won't fully separate each compartment and shield the fuge area from the high flow.

 

But by having the last baffle shorter....as the water in the middle compartment rises, it will eventually just spill over into the third compartment w/o causing the water level to rise above both baffles. Therefore this effectively "shields" the fuge area from the flow and keeps each compartment more effectively separate from the other.

 

Man, I'm finding this hard to explain clearly. But yeah, a lot of ppl just throw in baffles w/o even knowing why they need them and how they work. I don't have any on mine b/c I wasn't planning on having tons of flow rush into the sump and I didn't care about having tons of pod growth (but they still actually grow well in mine)...so your flow rates will influence what kind of baffle system you have. In addition, what you want to keep in the fuge area will also influence baffle design since deep sand beds need very little disturbance and pods in theory should have a more separated area to grow.

 

The height of the baffles (if set-up appropriately) will also determine the water level if you make sure to have different height baffles.

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I'm not quite getting this less flow from different size baffles argument. I spose it is the kinda thing that is hard to describe without a fluid dynamics model to illustrate the diferences.

 

From what I understand...

 

If you have x liters of water flowing through your fuge the flow will be the same whether or not the baffles are the same size or not. If the baffles are stepped then you would only have a different effect if you limited the ammount of water in the sump so that it did not exceed the hight of the baffles. If your sump is fairly full it wont matter if the baffles are the same size or not. The only thing that would matter is the hight of the baffles in relation to the water level.

 

Also the deeper the water the less flow there will be at any point in the fuge for a give number of liters per second passing through the fuge, given that the container size does not change.

 

Therfore from my experience baffles are designed to do the following: Trap bubbles, redirect flow and keep equipment seperated from the fuge or other equipment.

 

That's my understanding anyway.

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