Baffled about Baffles

[NateHanson]

whats a good height for baffles?

Your "over" baffles (the ones that sit right on the bottom of the tank) will determine the water level in your sump. The most important thing is to make sure that they are low enough so that the sump has enough empty space in the top to hold all the water that will flow out of your plumbing and display tank when the return pump is turned off, so you don't get a flood. You can guess at this (my 15g sump fills up about 2 inches) or test this by putting your empty sump-tank (no baffles) under your tank with your return pump in it. Fill the display, and fill the sump so it has a few inches of water over the pump. Turn on the pump. The water level in the sump will drop to a certain point. Mark that with tape or a marker on the outside of the sump. Then shut off the pump. Water will drain back into the sump and raise the water level. Mark the new level. The difference between those levels is how much space you need above your highest "over" baffles in your sump.

Nate

 

[nunofs]

Another constraint for the height of the baffles is the ideal water level for the skimmer, if it's an in-sump skimmer... that's what determined the height for my baffles, as the EuroReef needs to be in 6 to 8" of water (of course you can have higher baffles and raise the skimmer, but in that case you run into the issues described by Nate above, and want to make sure they're not too high or the sump will overflow in a power outage).

Nuno

 

[lactrain]

Here is how Installed the baffles in my sump .... what i did was lay out the position of the baffles using a permenant magic marker on the both sides of the sump. I then placed the baffles in and postion on the lines and taped the in position using masking tape. I then used silicone spot tacking the baffles in postion and allowed them to dry removed the tape and siliconed it up thoroughly.