Sump Question
by
, 03-26-2015 at 12:01 PM (7774 Views)
Hello. First of all thank you to everyone for all the help y’all have given me on previous questions!!
I have a question about my current sump setup. This was setup about 4 years ago and is not the ideal setup. At the time I thought I had it planned out so “perfectly” but after I had purchased everything and went to set it all up it didn’t work the way I had in my head and after some setbacks I have my current setup. I know y'all are going to read this and say "What on earth was she thinking??" But in my defense I hadn't found this site and took the advice of a friend who had less experience than me. So with that being said, here we go.
My aquarium has a wooden stand with two doors and I was not able to fit one long sump so I had the “brilliant” idea to get two 29 gallon tanks and basically have two sumps. One would have the skimmer and the other side would house my chaeto. After setting it all up and starting the return pumps once I had water coming down from the tank I discovered that it was not going to work. One side worked fine but I couldn’t get the other return pump dialed in just right. So now I have the water from the overflow come down into the right 29 gallon tank. I have a pump that pumps water to the left side where my chaeto and then a pump that pumps water back and to the side where my skimmer and return pump is. The biggest problem with this is the constant tweaking I have to do to keep the water levels where they need to be. I haven’t been able to run my skimmer for a while now because the water will get too low or high for my skimmer and it won’t run properly.
My water quality has been OK. All this time the parameters have been within the recommended ranges with the exception of Nitrates and Phosphates. My phosphates are holding steady at 0.36 and I can never get the Nitrates below 16 ppm. I perform water changes religiously every week but because of my poor sump setup I am not able to run my protein skimmer which I am hoping once I get a proper sump I can resume using.
Now for my question:
Could I get away with a sump with a protein skimmer only? This would give me more room under the aquarium where I could add an ATO. I would like to get away from my current method of manually adding water every afternoon.
Thank you so much for any help!!!!