So as you recall a sump is the fish tank underneath your display tank which performs filtration for you. It's time to go into all the nitty gritty so you know what the eff I'm talking about. Filtration occurs in an aquarium in one of three ways
1- Mechanical
2- Chemical
3- Biological
Lets start with the basic one which is mechanical. This type of filtration simply means you use a physical device to remove bad shit from the water. Example- in most hang on filters there is a little pad inside. The water runs across the pad and anything too big to pass through it (such as fish poop) gets stuck. It mechanically filters out poop, algae, anything too big to wash through. It's a very simple form of filtration that just gets rid of the big stuff.
Chemical filtration involves adding chemicals to your tank or washing your water with a chemical to remove pollutants. An example- chlorine is toxic to fish. You may or may not know that chlorine is added to tap water to keep it "pure" and not growing bacteria etc. It's the same reason you put it in your pool. So if you tank your tap water and throw a fish in it they may die from chlorine toxicity. You can add a chemical to the water which will remove the chlorine rendering the water safe for fish.
Biological filtration is arguably the most important form of filtration and is rather simple actually. You have a whole bunch of "bad" stuff dissolved in your water. A living creature (lets say algae) takes that bad stuff and uses it to grow. So instead of having dirty water you now just have algae growing and turning the bad stuff into food.
Not too bad right? So now lets discuss how we actually do that. You achieve this by using your sump. A sump really is just a fish tank that is divided into a bunch of smaller segments. Each segment has a specific job so lets take a look at a sump!
Chemical filtration involves adding chemicals to your tank or washing your water with a chemical to remove pollutants. An example- chlorine is toxic to fish. You may or may not know that chlorine is added to tap water to keep it "pure" and not growing bacteria etc. It's the same reason you put it in your pool. So if you tank your tap water and throw a fish in it they may die from chlorine toxicity. You can add a chemical to the water which will remove the chlorine rendering the water safe for fish.
Biological filtration is arguably the most important form of filtration and is rather simple actually. You have a whole bunch of "bad" stuff dissolved in your water. A living creature (lets say algae) takes that bad stuff and uses it to grow. So instead of having dirty water you now just have algae growing and turning the bad stuff into food.
Not too bad right? So now lets discuss how we actually do that. You achieve this by using your sump. A sump really is just a fish tank that is divided into a bunch of smaller segments. Each segment has a specific job so lets take a look at a sump!
A fairly basic sump.Looks kinda complicated huh? I know, it takes a bit to understand what you're looking at. So lets talk about the basics of a sump. There are three main parts..
1- Intake
2- Refugium (often called a "fuge" for short)
3- Output
1- Intake
2- Refugium (often called a "fuge" for short)
3- Output
So follow along in the photo above. On the left side of the image is the intake. This is where water is drained from the display tank. The water travels down a pipe and fills the first chamber. Often at the end of the intake pipe there is a filter sock. The sock simply catches any big stuff before it goes into the rest of the sump (mechanical filtration!) Often a protein skimmer (the big tube-like device on the left of the photo above) is placed in the intake chamber to help clean the water. You may be asking "wtf is a protein skimmer?" Good question. It's a device which takes in salt water and removed organic pollutants from it. Organic molecules don't like water. Why? Well that's complicated just trust me 'kay? But a protein skimmer takes advantage of the "air-water" interface and uses bubbles to suck all the bad organic molecules from the water. It's a vital part of a healthy salt water aquarium. In other words it uses a mechanical device to perform chemical filtration!Water flows from the intake to the middle chamber the refugium. The section of the sump where living organisms are allowed to grow. In other words its a refuge for these creatures, get it? Small creatures and algae live in here and eat some of the pollutants out of your water and help to clean it up (biological filtration)!
The final chamber on the right is the output chamber. Water flows here where a pump pushes the clean water up a pipe back to the display tank.
And the cycle is complete... your fishies swim in their fresh clean water, poop all over the place, it gets drained to the sump, cleaned, and pumped back up to the display tank. Nifty huh?
Keep in mind this is a BASIC sump. There is a lot more you can add to a sump. Heaters, chillers, calcium reactors, UV sterilizers, external skimmers, the list goes on. These are just the basic requirements. If you want to check out a complicated sump try to figure this puppy out for a bit...
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