I came home one day to the sound of water running in the living room. This is what I found:
My husband came across this 55 gallon tank at a moving away/yard sale. We had to get online that night to figure out which were the oscars and which were the pacu. It didn't take much reading on fish forums to come to the conclusion that we had impossible overcrowding in that tank! Once we learned about the nitrogen cycle, we were spending hours vacuuming the feces out everyday and doing the equivalent of 60 - 100% water changes every day, 5 gallon buckets at a time. It's a wonder my husband's back held out...
When we were setting up our 300 gallon tank, my husband was adamant about making the setup as maintenance-free as possible. I joined several fish forums to find out what kind of filtration we would need. I didn't get any satisfactory or helpful answers (I don't think I had come across MFK at that time). The LFS wasn't helpful, either, because he had never had a tank that large. He thought perhaps, that two large cannister filters would work. The tank builder recommended a large wet/dry filter, and a man who sets up and maintains tanks recommended spa filters. From my reading I learned that "you can never have too much filtration."
Our 300 gallon tank which houses two large pacu and two oscars (our two plecos died this year) has a 400 gallon capacity ProClear wet/dry filter running with a CA-6000 pump 1560 gph. This sits on the floor behind the tank and is plumbed in to one of the overflow boxes. We have the spraybar return from the wet/dry filter hanging in a plugged off overflow box which also has the heater for the tank. For mechanical filtration, we have two Rainbow spa filters fun by a Hammerhead pump (5800 gph). The mechanical filtration system is housed in a converted old furnace room which is directly behind the tank.
I had ordered an FX5 which was fairly new in the USA and was backordered. By the time it came, the tank had cycled and the fish moved to it. We were getting great water parameters. We connected the FX5 for backup filtration, and later added a 40 Watt UV sterilizer to the FX5.
The FX5 and UV sterilizer also sit on the floor behind the tank
The unique part of my husband's design are the poop suckers. These are two pipes that come down to 1/4" from the bare floor. These are connected to the mechanical filtration and quickly whisk away feces and debris from the tank. They were strategically placed where debris tended to eddy and concentrate. In the 19 months we've been using the tank, there has been no debris to vacuum out of the tank.
Poopsucker:
In the filter room, we have a 55 gallon tank sitting on a high shelf. We have a line running from the utility sink up to the tank to fill it. The tank is plumbed into the mechanical system. We have a heater in that tank, and keep it full of conditioned water.
The vertical line on the right is from the holding tank. Opening the valve sends the heated conditioned water to the main tank. Directly behind this pipe you can see an elbow with a pipe going downwards (against the wall). This pipe goes under the house and and then outside to the patio. Turning the valve on outside, starts the siphoning action in the tank. We can very quickly siphon out 200 gallons. The poop suckers and the main mechanical uptake work very well siphoning out the water. The horizontal lines are the uptake lines for the mechanical filtration. There are valves at the tank and at the filter end on every line. If the valves for the uptake lines are shut, the water siphons through the mechanical return, rinsing out the spa filters before being dumped outside. The return nozzle is only a few inches below the waterline, so it isn't too long before the nozzle is out of the water, and the uptake lines have to used to siphon the rest of the water.
Here's a picture of the back of the tank. We had to drill several more holes in the top of the tank to accomodate our poop suckers and the FX5 we threw into the mix:
The pipe in the front left is the main mechanical return line. On the right and also past the overflow box are the two poop sucker pipes. The hose from the FX5 is also there. The main mechanical uptake is on the far side of the second unused overflow box. There is a very swift current in the tank which our fish love. When we do water changes, we usually very quickly pump in the last 100 gallons of water. (By turning the faucet on feeding the 55 gallon holding tank, we get 100 gallons from the 55 tank!) Here's a video of our fish enjoying the turbulent action!
We think we've given our rescued fish a good home. Water changes are super easy and involve turning valves on and off and pumps off and on. The water parameters are excellent, and nitrates are kept under 20 ppm.
My husband came across this 55 gallon tank at a moving away/yard sale. We had to get online that night to figure out which were the oscars and which were the pacu. It didn't take much reading on fish forums to come to the conclusion that we had impossible overcrowding in that tank! Once we learned about the nitrogen cycle, we were spending hours vacuuming the feces out everyday and doing the equivalent of 60 - 100% water changes every day, 5 gallon buckets at a time. It's a wonder my husband's back held out...
When we were setting up our 300 gallon tank, my husband was adamant about making the setup as maintenance-free as possible. I joined several fish forums to find out what kind of filtration we would need. I didn't get any satisfactory or helpful answers (I don't think I had come across MFK at that time). The LFS wasn't helpful, either, because he had never had a tank that large. He thought perhaps, that two large cannister filters would work. The tank builder recommended a large wet/dry filter, and a man who sets up and maintains tanks recommended spa filters. From my reading I learned that "you can never have too much filtration."
Our 300 gallon tank which houses two large pacu and two oscars (our two plecos died this year) has a 400 gallon capacity ProClear wet/dry filter running with a CA-6000 pump 1560 gph. This sits on the floor behind the tank and is plumbed in to one of the overflow boxes. We have the spraybar return from the wet/dry filter hanging in a plugged off overflow box which also has the heater for the tank. For mechanical filtration, we have two Rainbow spa filters fun by a Hammerhead pump (5800 gph). The mechanical filtration system is housed in a converted old furnace room which is directly behind the tank.
I had ordered an FX5 which was fairly new in the USA and was backordered. By the time it came, the tank had cycled and the fish moved to it. We were getting great water parameters. We connected the FX5 for backup filtration, and later added a 40 Watt UV sterilizer to the FX5.
The FX5 and UV sterilizer also sit on the floor behind the tank
The unique part of my husband's design are the poop suckers. These are two pipes that come down to 1/4" from the bare floor. These are connected to the mechanical filtration and quickly whisk away feces and debris from the tank. They were strategically placed where debris tended to eddy and concentrate. In the 19 months we've been using the tank, there has been no debris to vacuum out of the tank.
Poopsucker:
In the filter room, we have a 55 gallon tank sitting on a high shelf. We have a line running from the utility sink up to the tank to fill it. The tank is plumbed into the mechanical system. We have a heater in that tank, and keep it full of conditioned water.
The vertical line on the right is from the holding tank. Opening the valve sends the heated conditioned water to the main tank. Directly behind this pipe you can see an elbow with a pipe going downwards (against the wall). This pipe goes under the house and and then outside to the patio. Turning the valve on outside, starts the siphoning action in the tank. We can very quickly siphon out 200 gallons. The poop suckers and the main mechanical uptake work very well siphoning out the water. The horizontal lines are the uptake lines for the mechanical filtration. There are valves at the tank and at the filter end on every line. If the valves for the uptake lines are shut, the water siphons through the mechanical return, rinsing out the spa filters before being dumped outside. The return nozzle is only a few inches below the waterline, so it isn't too long before the nozzle is out of the water, and the uptake lines have to used to siphon the rest of the water.
Here's a picture of the back of the tank. We had to drill several more holes in the top of the tank to accomodate our poop suckers and the FX5 we threw into the mix:
The pipe in the front left is the main mechanical return line. On the right and also past the overflow box are the two poop sucker pipes. The hose from the FX5 is also there. The main mechanical uptake is on the far side of the second unused overflow box. There is a very swift current in the tank which our fish love. When we do water changes, we usually very quickly pump in the last 100 gallons of water. (By turning the faucet on feeding the 55 gallon holding tank, we get 100 gallons from the 55 tank!) Here's a video of our fish enjoying the turbulent action!
We think we've given our rescued fish a good home. Water changes are super easy and involve turning valves on and off and pumps off and on. The water parameters are excellent, and nitrates are kept under 20 ppm.
HOLY **** 
