Filtration Ideas Please.

Black_Diamond

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Oct 6, 2017
57
55
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41
Reno, NV
Hey all,

I am awaiting my 405 Pentair tank which should arrive in about two weeks and am starting to stress over the best way to filter it.

I keep Freshwater ways in glass aquariums with a sump. This will be his forever home and free up my 210 for other animals. I wanted to go with a mech drum filter however I am not sure how to go about plumbing it or what to use to heat the water (was thinking of a tankless water heater) however when I asked Pentair about drilling the tank they obviously don't recommend it but I'm not too concerned about pulling that off correctly.

I guess my main question is what would you folks do? Do you have a better way or better idea?

Any and all comments appreciated thank you!
 
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Potato Patatto

Aimara
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Let me know what you come too on this and how you like the pentair. I am looking at the 720 so I think that will inevitably require a large sump. As for a 420 I think you could get away with 2 fx6s and 2 sponge filters as a relatively simple and straight forward solution, just maybe not very cost effective. Love to see/hear what you do though.
 

Black_Diamond

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Oct 6, 2017
57
55
36
41
Reno, NV
Let me know what you come too on this and how you like the pentair. I am looking at the 720 so I think that will inevitably require a large sump. As for a 420 I think you could get away with 2 fx6s and 2 sponge filters as a relatively simple and straight forward solution, just maybe not very cost effective. Love to see/hear what you do though.
Hey friend, so with this much water flow and the autonomous nature of what I am going to be doing no filtration is going to be done except a mech drum filter and an inline heater. I'm more asking for people who have had experience drilling fiberglass tanks and running water through their drum to the heater then to the tank. If they just used a pump or if do to the elevation of the drum filter to the tank they were able to use gravity. Both options work just wondering which works best.
 

Black_Diamond

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Oct 6, 2017
57
55
36
41
Reno, NV
Hey friend, so with this much water flow and the autonomous nature of what I am going to be doing no filtration is going to be done except a mech drum filter and an inline heater. I'm more asking for people who have had experience drilling fiberglass tanks and running water through their drum to the heater then to the tank. If they just used a pump or if do to the elevation of the drum filter to the tank they were able to use gravity. Both options work just wondering which works best. And as far as cost goes the drum filter alone is 3 grand so theres not too much more expensive than that I'm not worried about cost I just don't want to do any water changes ever.
 

esoxlucius

Alligator Gar
MFK Member
Dec 30, 2015
3,670
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194
UK
Hey all,

I am awaiting my 405 Pentair tank which should arrive in about two weeks and am starting to stress over the best way to filter it.

I keep Freshwater ways in glass aquariums with a sump. This will be his forever home and free up my 210 for other animals. I wanted to go with a mech drum filter however I am not sure how to go about plumbing it or what to use to heat the water (was thinking of a tankless water heater) however when I asked Pentair about drilling the tank they obviously don't recommend it but I'm not too concerned about pulling that off correctly.

I guess my main question is what would you folks do? Do you have a better way or better idea?

Any and all comments appreciated thank you!
The way you're feeling now was exactly how I was feeling when I first got my fibreglass tank. How the hell do I rig this thing up? I hunted high and low for ideas but in the end I wanted to utilise the KISS method (keep it simple stupid), and so i went with an extremely simple set up after seeing a fellow members set up on you tube. The simple drawing below shows you how basic it is. The fact that it has been running for about 18 months now without any problems whatsoever tells me I was right in doing it this way.

My tank is on a wooden stand. This raises the viewing window up to a better level for seeing the fish, and more importantly it means that the tank outlet is at a good position in relation to my barrel filter. If my tank had been on the floor I wouldn't have had enough height at the side to fit my barrel.

The drilling of the tank was easy. The bulkhead is 2". The internal elbow in the tank gives me my desired water level. The external elbow obviously directs the water down to my filtration. This consists of four stacked up crates. The top three are for mech and bio and have holes drilled in the bottom for ease of flow through each crate. The bottom crate just has a large hole cut in the side and my pump slots into this hole. The pump draws water down through the crates and as you can see I have a length of corrugated flex tubing returning the filtered water back to the tank. The end of the return lodges snuggly into a panel in my canopy, it cannot come loose, so no chance of any potential flooding incidents.

I heat the water with 3x300 watt heaters. They are all stuck to the inside of the tank via suction cups around the area where my water returns to the tank, for good heat distribution.

And that is it basically. They say the easiest way is usually the best, and that certainly rings true regarding my set up.

It's a bit "gluggy" but the sound is unimportant as the tank isn't in a family room. It's not the most aesthetically pleasing either, but again this tank isn't meant to be a centre piece of attraction. It's in my fish room, it's just for me.

One mistake i've made on the drawing is that it looks like you can see the tank water level through the viewing window. This isn't the case, i've just drew the window too high in relation to the tank.

Hope you can take something away from this and incorporate it into your set up. Good luck.

20201212_075107.jpg
 
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duanes

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This was a simple system I had (the 1st shot) was taken during a water change which lowered water level of the barrel well over a foot..
1607775470919.png
For mechanical a couple filter socks
1607775576825.png
as you can see the pump is easily accessible for mainanence (the union is for easy detachment) you can see a heater lying horizontally.
1607775666165.png
For Biofiltration a fluidized bed reactor was built and sat next to the barrel circulating mechanically filtered water back to the sump.
1607775757621.png
1607775796019.png
This systems handled about a 600 gallons of tank bio load.
For new water, a permanent line was added with a Tee so a temp probe could monitor incoming new water.
In Milwaukee, incoming water could be in the uppers 30sF in winter, so heated water needed to be blended during those times
1607776067678.png

1607776022924.png
 

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Black_Diamond

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Oct 6, 2017
57
55
36
41
Reno, NV
The way you're feeling now was exactly how I was feeling when I first got my fibreglass tank. How the hell do I rig this thing up? I hunted high and low for ideas but in the end I wanted to utilise the KISS method (keep it simple stupid), and so i went with an extremely simple set up after seeing a fellow members set up on you tube. The simple drawing below shows you how basic it is. The fact that it has been running for about 18 months now without any problems whatsoever tells me I was right in doing it this way.

My tank is on a wooden stand. This raises the viewing window up to a better level for seeing the fish, and more importantly it means that the tank outlet is at a good position in relation to my barrel filter. If my tank had been on the floor I wouldn't have had enough height at the side to fit my barrel.

The drilling of the tank was easy. The bulkhead is 2". The internal elbow in the tank gives me my desired water level. The external elbow obviously directs the water down to my filtration. This consists of four stacked up crates. The top three are for mech and bio and have holes drilled in the bottom for ease of flow through each crate. The bottom crate just has a large hole cut in the side and my pump slots into this hole. The pump draws water down through the crates and as you can see I have a length of corrugated flex tubing returning the filtered water back to the tank. The end of the return lodges snuggly into a panel in my canopy, it cannot come loose, so no chance of any potential flooding incidents.

I heat the water with 3x300 watt heaters. They are all stuck to the inside of the tank via suction cups around the area where my water returns to the tank, for good heat distribution.

And that is it basically. They say the easiest way is usually the best, and that certainly rings true regarding my set up.

It's a bit "gluggy" but the sound is unimportant as the tank isn't in a family room. It's not the most aesthetically pleasing either, but again this tank isn't meant to be a centre piece of attraction. It's in my fish room, it's just for me.

One mistake i've made on the drawing is that it looks like you can see the tank water level through the viewing window. This isn't the case, i've just drew the window too high in relation to the tank.

Hope you can take something away from this and incorporate it into your set up. Good luck.

View attachment 1442995
Thank you, this is what I've been looking for is diagram or something like this to explain where I should be drilling. I am used to overflows that are covered obviously in a glass tank and with something this big I didn't want to drill into the bottom necessarily in case I screwed it up. So if I'm looking at this correctly I think that you drill into the side of the tank at the desired water level and then it enters through the elbow and then gravity will syphon it to the desired filtration is that correct?
 

Black_Diamond

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Oct 6, 2017
57
55
36
41
Reno, NV
This was a simple system I had (the 1st shot) was taken during a water change which lowered water level of the barrel well over a foot..
View attachment 1443013
For mechanical a couple filter socks
View attachment 1443014
as you can see the pump is easily accessible for mainanence (the union is for easy detachment) you can see a heater lying horizontally.
View attachment 1443015
For Biofiltration a fluidized bed reactor was built and sat next to the barrel circulating mechanically filtered water back to the sump.
View attachment 1443016
View attachment 1443017
This systems handled about a 600 gallons of tank bio load.
For new water, a permanent line was added with a Tee so a temp probe could monitor incoming new water.
In Milwaukee, incoming water could be in the uppers 30sF in winter, so heated water needed to be blended during those times
View attachment 1443019

View attachment 1443018
Thank you for all the great pictures! That's very helpful. Do you use any sort of top-off gadget to stop it from overflowing? Or do you have to regulate it when you do water changes and then once you achieve the desired water level its safe to walk away?
 

esoxlucius

Alligator Gar
MFK Member
Dec 30, 2015
3,670
13,557
194
UK
Thank you, this is what I've been looking for is diagram or something like this to explain where I should be drilling. I am used to overflows that are covered obviously in a glass tank and with something this big I didn't want to drill into the bottom necessarily in case I screwed it up. So if I'm looking at this correctly I think that you drill into the side of the tank at the desired water level and then it enters through the elbow and then gravity will syphon it to the desired filtration is that correct?
Yeah, my barrel is gravity fed. The only pumping of water is from the barrel back to the tank. At maintainance time I just turn my pump off, let the run off water settle in the barrel and then take the top filtration crate completely out. I take it to the kitchen and blitz all the sponges in warm tap water and replace my filter floss with new. Five minutes of a job.

The other two crates with bio media in haven't been touched in the 18 months it's been running.
 

duanes

MFK Moderators
Staff member
Moderator
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Isla Taboga Panama via Milwaukee
Not so much with the barrel, but with other sumps I use a float valve made for cattle troughs.
1607802828313.png
The float is th red thing, as the tank fills, it pushes up against the inflow opening.
1607802926581.png
 
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