yiyi67

I guess the easiest option is to put a uniseal in the sump and the prop section and run PVC between the two. That way water will flow back into the sump. Water can be pumped from the sump or from the return pump into the prop section.

Thanks Marc, this is more or less what I had in mind. I just figured I'd investigate my options before I do anything with it.

I would agree. Speaking of making things better (more complicated), I was thinking about adding an emergency overflow standpipe to my sump. It would have the opening just below the top of the sump wall. It would drain through a bulkhead, through a water trap, and into the waste drain.

I know this will function correctly; however, I am sure there is someone out there that will explain to me why this would be unneccesary. I was thinking that it would be a back up in case my siphone holes plugged. Of course if that happened, shame on me for not checking them every few days, and I would have bigger problems to worry about if my livestock became exposed to air.

What are you going to light your frag tank with?

I have seen this done on some other systems. The biggest drawback for me would be the fact that you lose all that water (I guess it would make you do a water change though!) Ideally I would plumb it to drain into a holding container of some sort so once you get the initial problem figured out you can just pump that water back into your system. At the same time, I'm the first to say that finding the real estate to put in an empty container that serves no purpose 99% of the time can be a real hassle, so as long as you keep some fresh saltwater made up or something in case of emergency I don't see why you couldn't do this.

For the lighting of my frag tank I am thinking of just using a simple MH pendant such as a Hamilton or Aquamedic. Not sure on the wattage yet, 150W or 250W depending on the depth I decide I want to keep the frags at. I am thinking I will go with a lower kelvin bulb like a 6500K since I will be focusing on strictly growing out the frags and then let them color up in my display under better lighting. I also have a DIY LED fixture I made a while back for a 12g nano that I used to have set up. It works great but I am going to run some par tests to see what kind of light it really puts off, I'm not convinced it will make enough for me to want to use it.

Thanks for the input!