sump size

Thanks for the great pictures! Seeing those really helped a lot.

 

Kc heres a pic of mine. As others have stated I would make it as big as possible.

 

Great, thank you!!

 

90g display / 55g sump - the 55 would be easy to fit under there, lots of room for a fuge / and they can be purchased very cheap on craiglist or other reefers. Or do a 30 long.

 

My CL has practically nothing for fish or aquariums. I check all the time and it's really lame and disappointing.

I'll look into the dimensions on a 55 and 30 long. I think having a fuge would be cool.

Now, is it true that you can add your sump and DT capacities together to get your true amount of tank water...hmm...how do I say this....like if I got a 30 gallon sump, then I could have (120/3) 40" of fish? Does that make any sense? Lol

 

That sucks.

And no, sump + DT does not = total volume. The sump will never be completely full of water, so if you have a 30 gallon sump, you will probably have more like 10-15 gallons of water filling it. Then you have to count in water displacement from sand, rock, and submerged equipment. I have a 20 gallon sump with around 10 gallons of water, and a 75 display with more like 60 gallons of water due to displacement.

So if you do the inches of fish per gallon try to calculate your actual water volume. So I have roughly 70 gallons total, not 95. Big difference.

 

Oh, I thought for sure I had read that a few times on here. Must have been having a crazy moment!

 

You can - just make sure you try to calculate the actual water volume. That will be important down the line when dosing or if you need to medicate for anything.

 

It makes sense. I think the answer borrows a bit from both schools of thought. For tangs, wrasses, and other "swimmers" that rely on physical room in which to swim about--the rule applies only to the DT dimensions. For example, when you read that a certain tang needs a certain size tank, that's not recommendation based on water volume, but on sheer swimming room because these fish need to swim to be healthy.

For the bioload aspect of the question, you could conceivably use the total system volume. Be careful, though. Base your decision on the aspect that affects you most. If it's just a bioload issue, then use total system volume, if it's a matter of swimming room, use the DT dimensions. For most, I think the answer would be a weighted combination of the two.

 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I know some fish have a minimum tank size because of swimming needs, aggression, etc. But I was thinking in terms of bioload, then I could go a bit over 90 gallons of fish. So a combo of both sounds good to me!

Thanks! I'll check out that thread link.