Sump in different room design question

[dizzyjay]

I have a 180g display in my dining room sitting on top a standard 30” height stand. I want to plumb it under the floor thru a crawl space then up to my office about 15’ away where the sump will be (low to the ground). if I keep the top sump below the bottom of the display (height wise) will there be enough pressure to keep the display overflowing into sump with the added horizontal distance and 2(ish)’ lift at the end of the run? Any info or advice with this type of set up is appreciated.

[Livinlocal]

Theoretically you could get it to work by creating a siphon, but is it really worth the effort and fine-tuning that it will take, to get something like that in place? You will need to weigh out your options and see if it’s really worth the gains to add a sump with all the time it’s going to take fine-tuning. Now, regardless of how much water goes into your overflow from the display, it will always find the lowest point which will be in the sump. Your biggest challenge is going to be getting the flow from your return pump to match the flow from the siphon.

[Kris]

As long as the sump level is below the tank level it will work as far as water flow/pressure goes. It might be a problem is you try to flow say 800 gph to the sump through a 1/2" return pipe, but if you are using at least a 1" diameter return I would guess that the flow loss from friction in the pipe would not be significant compared to the static return head pressure present due to the elevation drop.
The pipe will always be filled with water between the tank and the sump, so it could be a problem if something plugs it up (snail in the pipe, detritus build up, sediments), or if you need to do maintenance on it.

[cshplumber]

I would run 2 drains of ridiculous size like 1 1/2" or 2". First 1 would be the primary drain designed to be as quiet as possible while the second 1 would be set higher in the display to act as an overflow or back-up in case the primary gets restricted with critters or sediment and the larger size will make it easier to clear.

[dizzyjay]

Awesome- appreciate all the feedback. 2 2” redundant pipes to a tank lower than the display it is! (much easier than the crawl space cistern alternative dream

[DaveW]

Bean Animal design should work. There are several examples of different room sump designs in his thread in the DIY forum here. There are also some handy pressure head loss tables and calculators on the site that will tell you what size pipe to use in both directions. Don't guess. I recall seeing them in the "New to Hobby" forum, I think but that was a couple years ago. Research is a lot easier than rebuild so search around on the site.

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[DaveW]

Bean Animal design should work. There are several examples of different room sump designs in his thread in the DIY forum here. There are also some handy pressure head loss tables and calculators on the site that will tell you what size pipe to use in both directions. Don't guess. I recall seeing them in the "New to Hobby" forum, I think but that was a couple years ago. Research is a lot easier than rebuild so search around on the site.

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Site referenced above is Reef Central.

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