Ok, finally finished it and got it running today. I want to thank everyone on here who indirectly helped me without knowing. I spent a bunch of time reading the other posts on here and got a bit of advice from some in a lighting post of mine as well. Anyway, here is the outcome. The sump is a 29gal setup as follows from right to left: Intake from DIY siphon and skimmer. 3 baffles of varying heights feeding to the LR in the center. There's not a lot in there at the moment, but I will be adding more. This was some rubble I had sitting in my tank waiting for the sump. Then one last baffle leading to the return. The return pump is a Tunze that is rated up to ~600gph. I did put a T and ball valve above the return to redirect flow back to the sump if needed(I think I saw Bifferwine mention that in a post somewhere).
Here is what it ended up looking like. FYI - I suck at caulking.
The DIY overflow was something I found while searching online as well. It's basically a bunch of PVC. There is a 40min video online that I watch to understand it better. Basically, I have a 2in PVC pipe that is capped off on the bottom and has suction cups mounted on the back to hold it in place. On the top of that, I put some gutter guard to allow water to flow in and keep the fishies out. The overflow itself is 1in PVC that starts inside the 2in and comes up and out, down, over, back up and out to the sump. I put a ball valve on that as well to regulate the flow and an anti-siphon valve in the top to allow me to start the siphon.
Here's a view of what it looks like in the tank.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with it. Other that the cut on my finger and the blue stain on my carpet from the PVC cement(should have done it in the garage) it turned out pretty good. I will definitely be adding more live rock to the sump and maybe some chaeto as well. For my 1st attempt at this, I'm impressed with myself, especially since I didn't kill anything in the process.
For anyone that's interested, I'd be happy to provide more details on any specifics for you, just let me know.
Here is what it ended up looking like. FYI - I suck at caulking.
The DIY overflow was something I found while searching online as well. It's basically a bunch of PVC. There is a 40min video online that I watch to understand it better. Basically, I have a 2in PVC pipe that is capped off on the bottom and has suction cups mounted on the back to hold it in place. On the top of that, I put some gutter guard to allow water to flow in and keep the fishies out. The overflow itself is 1in PVC that starts inside the 2in and comes up and out, down, over, back up and out to the sump. I put a ball valve on that as well to regulate the flow and an anti-siphon valve in the top to allow me to start the siphon.
Here's a view of what it looks like in the tank.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with it. Other that the cut on my finger and the blue stain on my carpet from the PVC cement(should have done it in the garage) it turned out pretty good. I will definitely be adding more live rock to the sump and maybe some chaeto as well. For my 1st attempt at this, I'm impressed with myself, especially since I didn't kill anything in the process.
For anyone that's interested, I'd be happy to provide more details on any specifics for you, just let me know.
