hey guys I wanted to add a trickle filter to my 120 gallon aquarium with two HOB filters and a fluval 406 canister filter all adding up to 1083GPH, anyways I'm planning on doing it with a sterilite drawer and a ten gallon tank. First off I want to ask will this be enough since my aquarium bioload is high? And second of all I want to know what you put in the last/submerged compartment I know in the first you put filter floss and in the second you put pot scrubbers/bioballs but what goes in the last one exactly? And lastly I want to know if I could just use 2 pumps that have the same GPH rating instead of an overflow and a pump? And if so what GPH rating should I get on the pumps? Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!
TRICKLE FILTER HELP???
- Thread starter Mihajlo525
- Start date
I'd get something bigger than a 10g, but that's just me. I've ran a 10g sump on a 40 tall once, and it was on the small side for the 40.... and it would be really small for a 120.
Ceramic rings or something similar would be best for the submerged portion
A wetdry trickle tower will outperform almost any canister or HOB in terms of bio filtration in my opinion.
You need to drill the tank. You can't drain it with a pump. You'll never be able to balance the flow between the two. You can buy a HOB overflow but you're better off just drilling the tank. A couple 1" bulkheads properly plumbed should handle 1000gph. I'd probably just do a pair of 1.5" bulkheads to be on the safeside if I took the time to drill it
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Ceramic rings or something similar would be best for the submerged portion
A wetdry trickle tower will outperform almost any canister or HOB in terms of bio filtration in my opinion.
You need to drill the tank. You can't drain it with a pump. You'll never be able to balance the flow between the two. You can buy a HOB overflow but you're better off just drilling the tank. A couple 1" bulkheads properly plumbed should handle 1000gph. I'd probably just do a pair of 1.5" bulkheads to be on the safeside if I took the time to drill it
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I definitely won't be able to drill the tank and I can't really fit anything larger than a 10 gallon. The thing I Don't get is why wouldn't two pumps be able to balance the flow if they have the same GPH?(the pumps would be the same pumps). But how does an overflow balance the flow? I'm still a little confused on how overflows work, you might have to be a little patient with me XD
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Plain and simple - the pump that's going down has the benefit of a little friend called gravity helping out and depending on plunbing and the pump itself will probably move close to twice the water it's rated to because of this.
The other pump is pushing uphill, fighting the pressure on the pump as the height increases.
Any 90° bends or changes in direction add friction and head loss on the pump which hurts flow.
Even if somehow you were able to engineer a set of return and drain plumbing that were sized to accommodate the vast differences in flow rates (which is basically impossible) you'd still have the uncontrolled variable that you're most likely dealing with some Chinese made pump and regardless of the brand no two pumps are the same. No matter who makes it, you'll never get two pumps that have an identical output. Things like slime buildup on the impeller, debris on the strainer, even age of the pump will have a significant effect on output.
They'll never balance out. One pump will move more water than the other. In less than an hour the water will overfill either the sump or the display and eventually the system will drain the entire contents of your tank onto the floor, in this case your display will drain more water than the sump can return and you'll lose all of the water in the display until the pump runs dry.
Is there a particular reason you can't drill it? It's really easy. The hardest part would be emptying the tank and laying it on it's side.
I don't like the idea of hang on overflow boxes. There's no substitute for a hole and a bulkhead. I'm sure others will disagree. But I will never use one. Too many things to go wrong.
And lastly if you can't have anything larger than a 10g underneath I'd probably hold off. Conventional HOB filters or cansiters are the way to go. The amount of flow for a 120g would turn a 10g sump into a hurricane. It would almost be too small to really do anything with, and you'd have an almost zero margin for error resulting in water on the floor. When the power is shut off a small amount of water will drain back into the tank, usually from the return pump plumbing. A 10g simply won't be able to accommodate it.
Sorry for the long writeup lol
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The other pump is pushing uphill, fighting the pressure on the pump as the height increases.
Any 90° bends or changes in direction add friction and head loss on the pump which hurts flow.
Even if somehow you were able to engineer a set of return and drain plumbing that were sized to accommodate the vast differences in flow rates (which is basically impossible) you'd still have the uncontrolled variable that you're most likely dealing with some Chinese made pump and regardless of the brand no two pumps are the same. No matter who makes it, you'll never get two pumps that have an identical output. Things like slime buildup on the impeller, debris on the strainer, even age of the pump will have a significant effect on output.
They'll never balance out. One pump will move more water than the other. In less than an hour the water will overfill either the sump or the display and eventually the system will drain the entire contents of your tank onto the floor, in this case your display will drain more water than the sump can return and you'll lose all of the water in the display until the pump runs dry.
Is there a particular reason you can't drill it? It's really easy. The hardest part would be emptying the tank and laying it on it's side.
I don't like the idea of hang on overflow boxes. There's no substitute for a hole and a bulkhead. I'm sure others will disagree. But I will never use one. Too many things to go wrong.
And lastly if you can't have anything larger than a 10g underneath I'd probably hold off. Conventional HOB filters or cansiters are the way to go. The amount of flow for a 120g would turn a 10g sump into a hurricane. It would almost be too small to really do anything with, and you'd have an almost zero margin for error resulting in water on the floor. When the power is shut off a small amount of water will drain back into the tank, usually from the return pump plumbing. A 10g simply won't be able to accommodate it.
Sorry for the long writeup lol
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Thanks for the info! Lol now I see why I can't use two pumps, because common sense XD. What if I made the overflow close enough to the surface that if the pump did shut off it would only drain ten gallons? (Approximately 4.8cm from the surface of the water, but only 4cm just to be safe) so that it would only fill up the ten gallon tank/sump. What's another good way to keep ammonia down other than buying a $260+ FX5, or a wet/dry filter if it does nothing. I had a retic ray die of what appears to me as ammonia poisoning, even though I found no nitrates after two days. What I basically want to do is make sure my aquarium is safe for another ray because I'm not wasting another $100 lol... So what suggestions do you have? Would a 1150GPH powerhead help at all? I'm really stumped on foolproof methods on keeping ammonia and nitrates down... THANKS AGAIN YOU WERE A HUGE HELP
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That could work. I keep my returns about an inch under the waterThanks for the info! Lol now I see why I can't use two pumps, because common sense XD. What if I made the overflow close enough to the surface that if the pump did shut off it would only drain ten gallons? (Approximately 4.8cm from the surface of the water, but only 4cm just to be safe) so that it would only fill up the ten gallon tank/sump. What's another good way to keep ammonia down other than buying a $260+ FX5, or a wet/dry filter if it does nothing. I had a retic ray die of what appears to me as ammonia poisoning, even though I found no nitrates after two days. What I basically want to do is make sure my aquarium is safe for another ray because I'm not wasting another $100 lol... So what suggestions do you have? Would a 1150GPH powerhead help at all? I'm really stumped on foolproof methods on keeping ammonia and nitrates down... THANKS AGAIN YOU WERE A HUGE HELP
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You can see the black nozzle. 0n my 90.
By the time both of the returns and whatever is in the overflow chamber drain back into the sump I'm up about 5 gallons or so. For reference I have a 40gal sump under my 90.
I just think the 10 would be pushing it. You'd have to run it less than half full and try to cycle 500-1200 gph or so for a 5-10x turnover rate on the display.. at 5 gallons in the sump thats like 240 times the displacement of the sump being cycled through it every hour. I'm not sure if such a small volume of water can handle that kind of flow. But with enough tinkering im sure you could dial it in. I just like having a large margin for error. I run 30 gallons in my 40 sump. I've got plenty of room to make mistakes lol.
If a 10g is the biggest glass tank you can find that will fit then maybe it would be worth looking at some clear Rubbermaid tubs. Something with a similar footprint as the 10g but taller would probably work better in your favor
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For reference here's how tiny my 10g looked under my 40 tall. It worked ok but was still only 25% of the display volume (which imo is kind of around the minimum) and at half or 3/4 full it was probably only 10-15% of my display tank's volume. It worked ok but I was only running 350gph through the system. .
I don't know if you've looked on ebay or amazon, but sunsun makes some awesome canisters if you're looking for an inexpensive solution vs an fx6 or whatever.
I love my sunsun 302's, I have two of them on my 40b... A pair of 304's rated at 525gph would cost less than $150 for the pair shipped to your door. I think that would be adequate for bio filtration on a 120 along with your two HOB filters for mechanical filtering.
I have 2x fluval 406's and 2x whisper 60's on a 75g with an adult Oscar and Jack Dempsey. No ammonia issues, and the tank is also bare bottom. Most of the beneficial bacteria is in the filters themselves.
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