DIY sponge filter help

[bodoba]

Hey I need some help. I'm going to be making my own sponge filters for my 90gal set up. Because of the messy fish I'll be putting in there, I'll need a GPH of 900.
Because of this I'm using a powerhead. So of course I have a few questions.
With sponge filters you can't have the current too strong or it won't filter properly. For this I'm hoping to use LONG tubes and maybe make 2 filters out of 500 GPH powerheads.
Now this is still a lot of power. The sponge I'm using is a 10 PPI due to the amount of waste produced so I can prevent clogging.
1) How big of a sponge do I need?
2) Is there any GPH loss from the powerhead when fitted with the sponge filter?
3) Aside from longer tubes, how else can I compensate so that the power from the powerhead doesn't prevent proper filtration?
Thanks for any help!
Una

 

[ilostnemo]

if my thinking is correct, powerheads dont filter anything it just moves water.. also it will filter properly because its still moving through the sponge.. do you have a sketch or anything to let us know how your doing this?

 

[thincat]

More so, what type of power head are you going to use?

 

[ilostnemo]

and what type of fish do you have?

 

[bodoba]

Sorry it took so long to reply, I was having health issues. I will be having goldfish. I figured out basically everything for the sponge filter and the only issue I'm currently having is that the powerheads (still haven't picked one out) have their GPH marked at 0 ft and I'm not too sure what size of pvc to get without slowing down the flow.

I could technically use only one powerhead seeing as I found a few that are reasonably priced but the amount of sponge I would need for it is a large amount. Woud have to compensate by adding more than one pvc pipe which turns into huge GPH loss.

So I'm still going with 2 different pumps of 500 GPH (still don't know which brand) and I'll need approx. 4X4X4 sponge to accomodate it so I'm going to use a 10 PPI for wastes and a 30 PPI for great BB amount.

Don't ask me how but somehow I found out the amont of sponge I would need per gallon.

Getting the sponge from swisstropicals.com any help on the pipe size info would be great. The only resource I could find was pipe sizes used in DIY refugium that said a 1" PVC will have a flow rate of 600 GPH so I'm guessing that's what I would be using.

Una

 

[BillD]

The most effective method would be to use the Hamburg filter as shown at Swiss Tropicals. A friend who converted all of his 40 tanks to this method, likes the 20 PPI reticulated sponge. He has gone a year without any maintenance on the filter media.