Hey guys, the time has finally come!!! Don't worry I got some pictures. Let me show you what our original layout plans where for the fish room:
Everything in that is double or triple stacks. The sump is filtering the two stacks of 75 gallon tanks and the 6 ft tanks on the same wall. 750 gallons in aquarium in total.
Here is the preliminary sump drawings, the sump is a chemtainer standard 265 gallon polyethylene tub. I have a friend at a local manufacturer...
http://www.chemtainer.com/home/default.aspx
So from the beginning. Some will recall I had a thread about Uni-seal bulkheads, I can now say they work wonderfully. They produce a solid connection between 1 inch and 4 inch pvc
Yeah that looks great doesn't it. We have the issue that the drain has to remain at level with the top of the sump for obvious gravitational flow reasons. The sump as you might have noticed in the drawings is not short its rather tall. This requires special treatment of the overflows for the bottom tanks, note the 180 out of the top:
Note the taps are all ontop, this is to minimize any backup pressure that might form in the 4" drain. We (me and Bowtiewarrior) Were concerned if there was backup it would cause the bottom tanks to overflow so we went with the generous(SAFE) gravitational flow rate of a 4" pvc pipe to avoid this at all cost.
Some assembly is required:
At the end there you'll see our drain T into the sump. Anyone with a sump will tell you that they are noisy if you aren't careful, especially at 4,000 plus GPH(our starting point for flow as that was a pump we already had lying around). We went out of our way and got 2" nipples and discharge hose to deliver the drain water quietly into the sump.
Sorry forgot to mention earlier its a filter sock pre-filter system we settled on. It seemed easiest to upkeep on a weekly basis. I have floss in another sump I recently acquired and am somewhat dubious as to its efficiency, never mind it's lifespan in between cleanings.
You'll notice in the background of our pictures that the 75 gallons are indeed up and running with stock in them(and lots of algae). As such we didn't want to tear those tanks down during the testing periord of the sump and plumbing so we are only connecting the currently empty 6 ft tanks to the system. We layed the pipe for the whole system just didn't put those 4 ft tanks on:
You'll notice something that went on to become a problem in the above assembly, when we drew everything out we left a very scarce 1" in vertical tolerance for the overflows on the bottom tanks. Sadly we failed and the tanks are about 1.5" to low relative to the drain pipe, we suspect we can remedy this by propping up the stand on some 2"x4"s but we will do a simple raised bucket test first.
We weren't terribly sure of what flow our system could support. When this project started I had never in my life run a sump system before. We left a union in the line so we could setup a system test with the spare pump, determine flow potential and discern what pump we needed/wanted. The reason we won't stick with this pump is because it uses between 600 and 800 watts to run(we tested it on a kill a watt EZ)
Here is the ad-hock assembly for that test pump:
Man I was out of town last weekend and Bowtie readied the system to begin testing, when I got back all we did was finish the T return and Monday night it was glorious:
TANK FILLING!
I had to include that, I know its your favorite part of tank ownership. The T was drying so we couldn't use it the first time but here ya go!!!
[video=youtube;LE8aAXSpZG0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8aAXSpZG0&feature=youtu.be[/video]
Still testing some of the DIY overflow stuff, if you guys have any recommendations for how to get best flow out of a 1 inch overflow please link me. The sump will feature a DE filter or two at the return to purify the water down to 1 micron. I've gone through many phases of wanting to have UV, Fluidized bed, and Bio tower filters on this but the DE makes most sense, adds most with least cost and little additional monthly overhead.
Yet to come!
-Filling the sump with socks and media
-Installing the final pump and DE filter
-Resolving our bottom tank overflow issues
-Installing the air line for the sponge filters we plant to put in every tank
-Getting all the tanks on the system!
Questions:
Do you think having a substrate in any of the tanks will be detrimental to the system. All tanks are glass bottom but we had considered adding silica sand to each tank.
What micron filter socks would you use, we can fit 2 max stacked on the rack. Please advise.
For more info on the insane progression of my fish hobby see this silly thread:
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?402500-My-fish-room-renovation-project
Ok just so you know being able to post this is probably the proudest moment in my life so far...
Everything in that is double or triple stacks. The sump is filtering the two stacks of 75 gallon tanks and the 6 ft tanks on the same wall. 750 gallons in aquarium in total.
Here is the preliminary sump drawings, the sump is a chemtainer standard 265 gallon polyethylene tub. I have a friend at a local manufacturer...
http://www.chemtainer.com/home/default.aspx
So from the beginning. Some will recall I had a thread about Uni-seal bulkheads, I can now say they work wonderfully. They produce a solid connection between 1 inch and 4 inch pvc
Yeah that looks great doesn't it. We have the issue that the drain has to remain at level with the top of the sump for obvious gravitational flow reasons. The sump as you might have noticed in the drawings is not short its rather tall. This requires special treatment of the overflows for the bottom tanks, note the 180 out of the top:
Note the taps are all ontop, this is to minimize any backup pressure that might form in the 4" drain. We (me and Bowtiewarrior) Were concerned if there was backup it would cause the bottom tanks to overflow so we went with the generous(SAFE) gravitational flow rate of a 4" pvc pipe to avoid this at all cost.
Some assembly is required:
At the end there you'll see our drain T into the sump. Anyone with a sump will tell you that they are noisy if you aren't careful, especially at 4,000 plus GPH(our starting point for flow as that was a pump we already had lying around). We went out of our way and got 2" nipples and discharge hose to deliver the drain water quietly into the sump.
Sorry forgot to mention earlier its a filter sock pre-filter system we settled on. It seemed easiest to upkeep on a weekly basis. I have floss in another sump I recently acquired and am somewhat dubious as to its efficiency, never mind it's lifespan in between cleanings.
You'll notice in the background of our pictures that the 75 gallons are indeed up and running with stock in them(and lots of algae). As such we didn't want to tear those tanks down during the testing periord of the sump and plumbing so we are only connecting the currently empty 6 ft tanks to the system. We layed the pipe for the whole system just didn't put those 4 ft tanks on:
You'll notice something that went on to become a problem in the above assembly, when we drew everything out we left a very scarce 1" in vertical tolerance for the overflows on the bottom tanks. Sadly we failed and the tanks are about 1.5" to low relative to the drain pipe, we suspect we can remedy this by propping up the stand on some 2"x4"s but we will do a simple raised bucket test first.
We weren't terribly sure of what flow our system could support. When this project started I had never in my life run a sump system before. We left a union in the line so we could setup a system test with the spare pump, determine flow potential and discern what pump we needed/wanted. The reason we won't stick with this pump is because it uses between 600 and 800 watts to run(we tested it on a kill a watt EZ)
Here is the ad-hock assembly for that test pump:
Man I was out of town last weekend and Bowtie readied the system to begin testing, when I got back all we did was finish the T return and Monday night it was glorious:
TANK FILLING!
I had to include that, I know its your favorite part of tank ownership. The T was drying so we couldn't use it the first time but here ya go!!!
[video=youtube;LE8aAXSpZG0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8aAXSpZG0&feature=youtu.be[/video]
Still testing some of the DIY overflow stuff, if you guys have any recommendations for how to get best flow out of a 1 inch overflow please link me. The sump will feature a DE filter or two at the return to purify the water down to 1 micron. I've gone through many phases of wanting to have UV, Fluidized bed, and Bio tower filters on this but the DE makes most sense, adds most with least cost and little additional monthly overhead.
Yet to come!
-Filling the sump with socks and media
-Installing the final pump and DE filter
-Resolving our bottom tank overflow issues
-Installing the air line for the sponge filters we plant to put in every tank
-Getting all the tanks on the system!
Questions:
Do you think having a substrate in any of the tanks will be detrimental to the system. All tanks are glass bottom but we had considered adding silica sand to each tank.
What micron filter socks would you use, we can fit 2 max stacked on the rack. Please advise.
For more info on the insane progression of my fish hobby see this silly thread:
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?402500-My-fish-room-renovation-project
Ok just so you know being able to post this is probably the proudest moment in my life so far...
Maybe your sock feeding T is high enough that removing the socks easily wont be an issue?