Creating a wet/dry sump filter for an aquarium
 

Further to my Acrylic Cutting thread here is the finished product! :D

The donor tank was a cheap (£60) off-the-shelf job 4ft x 1.5ft high x 1ft

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/filter_tank.jpg

1st Job was to remove the existing supports in the tank (i.e. smash the central support and then hack at the silicon with a stanley knife!!!)

Here are the remains and the tank minus braces!

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/remove_supports.jpg

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/tank_supports_removed.jpg

Next I started some serious acrylic cutting... The original scoring and snapping idea turned out to be a nightmare, it was impossible to score in a straight line, even against a guide - gave up on that in minutes!!!

A jigsaw with a fine tooth blade worked much better, but it is very slow going. Too quick and you end up melting the acrylic!
http://www.drift.net/aquaria/jigsaw.jpg

Once I had some acrylic cut I set to siliconing it in place. Here are the lower supports in place together with the first piece of "egg crate" on which the bioballs will sit!

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/first_eggcrate.jpg

And here is the second eggcrate in place together with the end plate! Taking shape!!!

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/2nd_eggcrate.jpg

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/endplate.jpg

Because the original tank braces have been removed I thought I better add a centre brace to stop the glass sides of the tank flexing too much! You can see it here being supported by two boxes of scooby brake pads. :D

Notice the top supports for the drip tray have also been added!

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/centre_brace.jpg

And here is the almost finished product complete with drip tray (with 340 holes!!!) on top. Water will fill the drip tray and be sprinkled over the bioballs where it will trickle to the bottom and be pumped back up into the tank.

The plate you see behind with the protective film still on is the lid. When I find out what size hole the tank has I will drill the same size in the centre of the lid and fit a tank connecter on where the filter will be plumbed in.

The open area at the left hand end of the tank is where the return pump will sit to pump the water back into the tank. I can lift up the eggcrates beneath the bioballs to lie a heater in there aswell if I wish.

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/driptray.jpg

The finished product (minus lid) filled with 4,000 bioballs! :D

http://www.drift.net/aquaria/4000bioballs.jpg

Interesting stuff eh Redkop? :D

:cool:

I am sure Redkop will agree :D

what size of tank are you planing to hook that up to? It looks like it's going to be pretty effective - 4000 balls must equate to a sh*tload of bacterial surface area.

:)

I'm sure I'll get round to setting up a tank one of these days...

http://www.hoolala.com/fishery/Direc...iscus/pic3.gif

Its for an 8ft x 2.5ft x 2.5ft tank. Work starts shortly on the stand!!! :D

I hope you don't have suspended floors :eek:

I still want to fit a tank into a chimney breast that is no longer in use. Unfortuntely other priorities are getting in the way at the moment.

That's a fair size tank - your filter is the same size as our biggest tank.

What do you have planned for going in it?

John.

I hate to say I told you so, but I .....


....told you so :)


looks good.

wassit do??

collects **** :D

:lol:

Amazingly a totally true and relevant statement.

John.

LOL! :D

Yep fair play, you got the jigsaw/blade bit spot on! :D

Putting it simply it is a huge home for nitrifying bacteria. The bioballs (basically spherical stickle bricks (remember them? :p)) present a huge surface area on which the bacteria will live. Fish excrete ammonia and the bacteria (in the presence of water and oxygen) convert the harmful ammonia to slightly less harmful nitrites and then to much less harmful nitrates. Its basically a mini ecosystem to keep the water healthy!

"Priority" is the key word here.... its subjective, i.e. you can reallocate it! ;)

My new kitchen and house decorating have been re-prioritised to come beneath cars and fish tanks! :D

My existing shoal of piranha (5x 6-7" redbellies, 3x 6-7" caribe and 1x 10" Ternetzi) will be moving in, plus a few piraya hopefully! :D

piccie follwed by some Q's:


http://www.maj.clara.net/tank.jpg


its 18" deep, 46" high,44" wide.


wahts the deepest tank I could get in there, how much room would I need above it, and where to get it built.

solid floor below, chimney breast above it.

I like cats,loach,plecs and tiger barbs.

any suggestions, I like the idea of deep(as in water) what are the pressure/thickness ratings for tanks? :)

I wouldn't worry about the pressures, you simply increase the thickness of the material to suit. The bloke who is building my tank has done a 40ft tank 11 ft deep! :eek:

Your main challenge here is access to the tank for maintenance purposes I reckon. To work out the clearance you'd need think about trying to reach the bottom of the tank. Its nearly 4ft so unless you had space to get a shoulder in you would have no chance.

Could you knock out part of the arch above and replace with a lintel and removable replica arch? If so this would give you valuable access space!

If you like I can give you the contact details of the guy who is making my tank (he specialises in acrylic). Its more pricey than glass, but they can make pretty much anything.

You will need to think about where you will put the filter too, because it will have to be integral if there is no space nearby.

Update: I had to construct a new drip tray because after testing under the kitchen tap I found I had drilled the 340 holes too big (3mm) - aarrrgh! :o

The new one has 1.5mm holes and works much better, although I may have to open them up to 2mm depending on the flow rate when I get everything plumbed in for real! :D

So only 340 mistakes in one project then ...... not bad going :p:D

why not just fill some of em' with silicon.

or restrict the flow into the tray?

:mad: ;)

Confession: Actually it was 374 mistakes because I forgot that the first time I marked the holes out I used 1" spacing lengthways and 30mm widthways. the second attempt I did 1" square, giving myself another 34 fricking holes to drill. :o

I thought about filling the holes, but silicon is very difficult to drill to a uniform diameter because it contracts back and closes the hole after drilling! I also thought about siliconing another sheet of perspex over the whole lot and drilling through the old holes with a smaller bit, but decided that I had put too much effort into it to end up doing a pikey bodge job. :D

Restricting the flow to the tray wasn't the issue, the problem was that unless I had niagra falls flowing into the tray, all the water would disappear through the middle of the tray and not spread out over all the bioballs!

AJM what a bloody good idea! think you should give me tips on my new tank! although its only half the size of yours! 4ft it is and i havent got a clue :D but it was free so im gonna run the two tanks! :D well done on your project though

ajm, those curtains are bloody terrible :D

And bricks inside are so 80's :D:D

Well spotted... that room is an 80's nightmare. Actually the whole house is apart from the 2 rooms I have decorated since moving in a year ago! Decorating is of lower priority than, well, everything! :D

If you look closely you may be able to pick out the horrific polystyrene wallpaper too! ;)

p.s. Off Topic! :nono:

Yawnnnnn http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smil...afen/sleep.gif

:D:D:D

:razz:


:D

Can I come and live at your house ajm? Yummy fish :D

Feel free to dip a paw in! It will save me some food money! :D

http://www.piranha-fury.com/photopos...676caribe3.jpg

I mean the ones in your garden, they sound like a very juicy meal mmmmm :D