Hello.
My sump for my 75g tank is 48” long, has six chambers, and it sits above my tank. I’m a bit of an overfilterer at heart, but thought I’d share my set up. Water comes in at the left and exits on the right.
Chamber 1 is a mini sock with foam and bioballs underneath. Btw.....my thoughts abt a mini sock is so that I have to change it often thus avoiding a huge sock getting all full of trapped NO3 producing waste. The more frequently the sock is cleaned, the better imho. Socks are good to remove larger bits of waste/food etc allowing for cleaner water to go through the rest of the mech. and bio filtration. Keeping large amounts of waste/food in a large sock is basically the same as if it remained in the tank molecularly speaking.
Chamber 2 is Biohome bags and Matrix bags.
Chamber 3 has a floating algae scrubber w bags of Biohome underneath.
Chamber 4 has another floating algae scrubber w Matrix underneath.
Chamber 5 is for roots of the Pathos plants growing off to the right.....roots in water w greenery above at right.
Chamber 6 has resin bags and is the double outlet. It is shallow so if power is lost, only a cup or two of water goes onto the tank w the rest of the sump maintaining its water volume. One outlet is situated above the other in case the lower one somehow gets blocked.
Also, I have two AC 110 HOBs for this tank in addition to the sump. I reduce heavy water flow by having the water enter the tank over/through very coarse filter foam pads. Thus the water is not too current heavy. Lastly, the outlet hoses from the sump to the tank are the ribbed regular sump hose bc I want to agitate the water coming back into the tank as much as possible which increases O2 levels. It’s kinda like an enclosed waterfall returning both cleaner and more oxygenated water to the tank.
Chambers: 1......mech and aerobic bio filtration, 2.....largely anaerobic w some aerobic filtration, 3....anaerobic filtration w NO3 reduction via algae growth, 4......anaerobic w NO3 reduction via algae growth, 5.....NO3 reduction via Pathos root refugium, 6....some last effort at NO3 reduction via resin bags.
Sorry I rambled, but, IMO, over filtration is indeed helpful for me between the WCs.
2B948394-9A07-4B5F-9E9F-7AB62A783234.jpg