Hi all, I will be moving my 300 gallon tank soon and want to redo my filtration. Currently it is in my bedroom on a stand that doubles as a dresser so there was not much room for filtration so I use a 55 gallon tank as a sump. I have a mag 18 as a return pump. I am using a "bean animal" style overflow system using 1 1/4" pipe for the siphon and open channel drains. I will be moving the tank to my living room and will be building a new stand which will allow more room for filtration. Current stock is a western painted turtle and several medium to large sa/ca cichilds. the new stock will be african cichlids. I will also be adding a quiet one 5000 pump from my old living room tank for a rough 2000 gph flow rate. As for the filter I will be using a 100 gallon Rubbermaid stock tank for the sump. For bio I will have a 20 gal brute trash can full of lava rock and pot scrubbies inside the sump. I have two options for mechanical. First is a radial flow filter, second is a sand and gravel filter. Both options will have a layer of filter floss over the pot scrubbies to catch anything left from the mechanical side. I know both these options are mostly used in pond/aquaponics systems but I feel they would work well for my setup. Either option would be built with a 32 gallon brute can next to the sump and have a back-flow system to flush solid waste from the filter.
I like the sand/gravel filter and have watched lots of videos on them my main concern is I would be feeding it with gravity flow vs a pump so I am concerned with overflow issues. My setup will have around a 4-5 foot vertical drop on the overflow lines so I think the water pressure would be fine to push though the sand/gravel unless it were to clog. One thought I had for this was to just use the various sizes of gravel for course filtration and use the filter floss for the fine particles.
As for the radial flow filter, my flow rate might be too high for the 32 gallon brute can to be effective. I could feed it with just the full siphon line from the overflow and run the open channel directly to the filter floss so that I could regulate the flow a bit.
Any thoughts are appreciated
I like the sand/gravel filter and have watched lots of videos on them my main concern is I would be feeding it with gravity flow vs a pump so I am concerned with overflow issues. My setup will have around a 4-5 foot vertical drop on the overflow lines so I think the water pressure would be fine to push though the sand/gravel unless it were to clog. One thought I had for this was to just use the various sizes of gravel for course filtration and use the filter floss for the fine particles.
As for the radial flow filter, my flow rate might be too high for the 32 gallon brute can to be effective. I could feed it with just the full siphon line from the overflow and run the open channel directly to the filter floss so that I could regulate the flow a bit.
Any thoughts are appreciated
