The recent disaster I had has finally given me the balls to lose my canister filter and kick in my new sump and overflow box.
I am a brit expat living in Istanbul and some things are very hard to get here so I went with a small home built sump. This one is a scaled down version of the huge one in my LFS which looks after 3 heavily stocked 35 gallon tanks.
I decided to go for a small one that would fit my cabinet as this tank is a fresh water conversion and I didn't want to take out any supporting shelves and risk weakening the cabinet.
It runs from right to left in the picture with the first chamber being a wet dry filter.
The middle one is my skimmer chamber and there is an enhiem 500 l/h pump in the final chamber.
After the disaster I have put a hole in the show aquarium return pipe just below the water line so that it won't back syphon and flood out the small sump in the event of a power cut.
I managed to get this huge overflow box from the LFS on order and at first I thought it would be too big, but it actually works out really well and aerates the water really well. I got the overflow box piping from a local marine chandlery shop. Its actually the tubing that they use on marine boats to bring external sea water into the toilets and the bilge and it only costs about 2 dollars per meter and just happened to be the perfect gauge for the outlet of the box.
I also added a Boyu protein skimmer to replace my small macro skimmer. In the first 3 days the Boyu wasn't picking anything up so I put the macro skimmer next to it as I had heard that some new skimmers need a few days to lose the top layer of cellulose from the inside of the bubble housing before the Venturi of the foam cup will grip the protein collected in the foam enough to force it upwards and not just dissolve back into the water.
Sure enough it's collecting very well now and very quietly so the macro skimmer has gone.
During the rescue I took my phosphate, charcoal and ceramics bags and placed them in the centre chamber where the water flow is fastest.
I also took the floss from the canister and stuck it under the sump inlet pipe
to try to wash some of the bacteria into the wet dry compartment.
Water quality seems great (despite using tap water in the rescue...thank God for Sera Aquatan) and thanks to the rescue I can now mix a 2 gallon bucket of Redsea water to almost exact SG first time.
I am a brit expat living in Istanbul and some things are very hard to get here so I went with a small home built sump. This one is a scaled down version of the huge one in my LFS which looks after 3 heavily stocked 35 gallon tanks.
I decided to go for a small one that would fit my cabinet as this tank is a fresh water conversion and I didn't want to take out any supporting shelves and risk weakening the cabinet.
It runs from right to left in the picture with the first chamber being a wet dry filter.
The middle one is my skimmer chamber and there is an enhiem 500 l/h pump in the final chamber.
After the disaster I have put a hole in the show aquarium return pipe just below the water line so that it won't back syphon and flood out the small sump in the event of a power cut.
I managed to get this huge overflow box from the LFS on order and at first I thought it would be too big, but it actually works out really well and aerates the water really well. I got the overflow box piping from a local marine chandlery shop. Its actually the tubing that they use on marine boats to bring external sea water into the toilets and the bilge and it only costs about 2 dollars per meter and just happened to be the perfect gauge for the outlet of the box.
I also added a Boyu protein skimmer to replace my small macro skimmer. In the first 3 days the Boyu wasn't picking anything up so I put the macro skimmer next to it as I had heard that some new skimmers need a few days to lose the top layer of cellulose from the inside of the bubble housing before the Venturi of the foam cup will grip the protein collected in the foam enough to force it upwards and not just dissolve back into the water.
Sure enough it's collecting very well now and very quietly so the macro skimmer has gone.
During the rescue I took my phosphate, charcoal and ceramics bags and placed them in the centre chamber where the water flow is fastest.
I also took the floss from the canister and stuck it under the sump inlet pipe
to try to wash some of the bacteria into the wet dry compartment.
Water quality seems great (despite using tap water in the rescue...thank God for Sera Aquatan) and thanks to the rescue I can now mix a 2 gallon bucket of Redsea water to almost exact SG first time.
