tidier filtration ideas needed

[meicalnissyen]

Greetings
The attached pic is of my stacked setup. its been running for appx 4 years.

I am stealing a few feet from the front room to make the guest BR larger and just finished sliding the stack over to accomodate that.

a couple years ago I replaced the 55 in the bottom slot with a 75, and I have enough meat in the frame I built to do this with the other 2, which I am seriously considering doing for several reasons, one of which being framing around the tanks and creating veiwing windows. the stack is in essence an extension of the main hallway in the house as is.

SO

I've been running intank pond pumps, pushing thru a pair of household filters loaded with bio media with a foam sock on the pump for mechanical.
the exact setup varies abit between the tanks (rings, miniballs, creamics etc)
but in essence same setups.

My TECO power here in tampa is pretty unreliable so i'm hesitant to do an overflow to a sump, but there is no species related reason I know of to avoid comingling the waters

looking forward to breaking the system down, blasting and adding a small brace to my feet, repainting bringing back online with a quiet efficient filtration sys. though part of me is hesitant to fix something thats not really broke
I have to do a swap of the socks every 10days ish, and open the cannisters up to rinse of the bio every 6 to 8 weeks


I would love to hear or see some ideas to do a neater job of filtering

the three tanks are:
huge oscar
big red devil (real a-hole that one)
community of convicts terrors oscars

 

[Andy Sager]

The key to using a sump and not having it overflow when the power goes out is to not use a small sump. I've designed small up to 1000+ gal systems and after the first time, never had a sump overflow again. So if you have the tanks drilled ( that's the best and easiest) or if you can install an overflow box outside the tank, you just have each tank individually empty into a single sump then a return pump that returns to the 3 tanks through a single return line. Then you have all your filtration in a neat compact place. You can even design a line to do water changes from the sump as well.

 

[meicalnissyen]

Thanks Andy

unfortunatley, no nice factory drilled corner boxes await

and, call me a , well call me whatever, but creating a siphon that leads outside a tank is something I do with a hose, while watching what happens til I am done with said water change ( i'm on a good well)

not likely to rely on 3 simultaneous siphons to run 24 hour ops,

i would not sleep

internal overflow= good to go

external over flow is why mold abatement companies are profitable

 

[Andy Sager]

Thanks Andy

unfortunatley, no nice factory drilled corner boxes await

and, call me a , well call me whatever, but creating a siphon that leads outside a tank is something I do with a hose, while watching what happens til I am done with said water change ( i'm on a good well)

not likely to rely on 3 simultaneous siphons to run 24 hour ops,

i would not sleep

internal overflow= good to go

external over flow is why mold abatement companies are profitable

That's why you have an issue with sumps. You are thinking siphon You do it so it's gravity fed and pumped back into the tank. No chance of overflow and can be set up to not drain the tanks either.

 

[meicalnissyen]

right on

I can fab up a sump that would fit underneath the stack
wouldnt have the traditional cascading wet/dry effect,
well, I could keep a gap on the end that is in the pic, and make an "L" shape should get 20 gal easy, mebbe 30

splash thru most of the media and flow thru the rest to the pump

said pump will need to run at 8 feet of head though

You have pics of something like what youre suggesting?

 

[Andy Sager]

right on

I can fab up a sump that would fit underneath the stack
wouldnt have the traditional cascading wet/dry effect,
well, I could keep a gap on the end that is in the pic, and make an "L" shape should get 20 gal easy, mebbe 30

splash thru most of the media and flow thru the rest to the pump

said pump will need to run at 8 feet of head though

You have pics of something like what youre suggesting?

You have to gauge how much water is going to be in the pipes and have enough water volume in the sump to handle that amount and still be deep enough to have the return pump not be sucking air. There are many choices for return pumps as well as containers to use as a sump. Water volume is almost secondary to shape of the sump. So say, for example, a 20 gal long tank would be too short while a 20 gal high tank would work fine. They both hold the same amount of water. So you need to think a little differently. Build to your need not "I have this so I can use it."

I'll try to find some of my pics of my old setups using this method. I don't think the one in my albums here has a view of the drain and return section of my current setup. In this one, I was just using some 10 gal flats to hold some Bettas so the return pump was just an old powerhead I had laying around and the sump was an old 15 gal tank. But I've made sumps for my systems from everything from a garbage can to plexiglass or glass tanks. It just has to hold enough water as I described above.