tha Bait Shack

This is what I affectionately call the Bait Shack. It is built entirely of reclaimed wood (a snooty way of saying it is junk) and other free stuff. The entire thing including pumps and filters cost me less than $200. I have tons of detailed pictures and uploading all of the info and pics is going to take a while. Please bear with me.

Here is some detail of the construction. The 4x4's were some reclaimed fence posts and two badly twisted ones that had nicely aged in the garage (they were straight when I bought them).

The frame is notched 4x4's with 2x4 cross beams. It was then skinned with 1970 wood paneling with the exposed surface facing inwards. I then skinned it again with plywood and the reclaimed wood for an 'at the warf' weathered look.

I plumbed the left side of the inside with 1 1/2 inch pvc for the overflow collection and for an anaerobic chamber. The top of the anaerobic chamber is shown in this picture. For the water returning to the tanks, I used 1" pvc reducing to 1/2".

The 1 1/2" pipes are filled with 1 1/2" Bio-Balls for aerobic & anaerobic filtering. They also prevent the down pipe from making the rushing water sounds.

And here is a detail of the plumbing with it in operation. The bottom two returns are valved and the top is unvalved. The bottom two require the valves to push some of the water higher. The top return is unvalved because it gets all of the leftover water that the other two did not get.

Notice the pvc work after the red handled valve. That is a little trick I came up with years ago. I use 1/2" schedule 20 pipe to glue in 1/2" OD vinyl hose.

Here is a view where you can get an idea of the waste plumbing coming from an overflow. I used sewer tees so I would not have to glue the fittings together. I only glued fittings that would let water leak out while flowing in a downward direction...if that made any sense.

Here is a view of the lower section of the stand. I had originally planned to have the pump and filter here but I kept changing my plans and my equipment kept growing. I cut two holes in the wall and moved it all outside. I still need to add a switch in the house so that I can turn off the pump without going outside. It is handy to have when an overflow stops working (see other thread).

in the above picture, the top pipe is returning to the tanks. the bottom pipe is going outside to the pump and filter. The clear tube is from the anaerobic chamber. I have not adjusted the valve yet. It needs to be slowed to barely a trickel. At the bottom of both vertical pipes is threaded plugs for any future service or to rescue any stray fish that want to hide in the overflows. They will never make it to the sump filter because of the bio-balls.

This is a modification I made to the overflows. Of course there is the netting rubberbanded to the last fitting because bichirs and gobies love to hide in long round things. I put the two 90's on the stand pipe of the overflow because when I feed the fish, any floating food goes straight for the overflow pipe. IMPORTANT: notice the gap between the 90's. That is important because there is a hole in the pipe to let air out of that loop. Otherwise when the system is shut down, the air trapped in the loop would prevent the overflow from restarting.

Finally, here is a pic of the equipment outside. The green tub is my wet/dry filter. It runs off line using a pump in the last chamber in the sump filter to get its water and it uses gravity to return the water to the first chamber of the sump filter. I chose to do it this way so that the wet/dry would have mechanically filtered water (from the last chamber) and returning it to the front prevents the problem of churning water infront of the supply pump.

The brown tub is of course the sump filter. See the following pic for detail.

The black barrel is the main sump (non-filter). Its job is only to collect and store water. It also provides some surge space when the system is shut down. It also houses the sump pump. The current pump is too large and a large heat emitter. I will be changing that tomorrow.