I have a 150gal tank that I keep a colony of Frontosa in. Recently my Ehiem pro2 canister decided to kick the bucket. I have had parts for a new filtration set up laying around I just never got around to getting the plumbing for it.
I used this as an opportunity to set the new filtration system up. I have 2 ocean clear canisters (a bead and a cartridge), a gen x pcx40 pump - not the one in the photo below the pump is blue (1,190gph) as well as a uv sterilizer. I just needed to figure out how I wanted to do this. My husband helped with figuring how to do it. He drew out a plumbing idea and went with it. I bought the pieces we needed and got to work. We got new wood to put underneath the tank to support the filter set up and then put a wood stain/sealant over it (I just decided to do the entire inside of the tank and got a new color for the outside lol). I am not sure how I feel about the end result yet, it works great and the flow is good coming out but it does need some tweaking.
I ll post some photos of what I got and you can see how I set it up.
The first few nights consisted of putting the plumbing together before making it permanent - once that was done we went ahead and put thread tape around the threaded portions. We had a furry helper too...
Next I spent some time on one of my days off working out the inlet and outlet pipe work - cutting the pipe and drilling. I used a design we made for an fx5 on another tank b/c it worked well. I have caps on these to fill/prime if needed.
A few days later on my next day off I painted the inlet/outlet set up black (I used krylon spray paint - I chose this b/c we have used it in the past for tank set ups and it doesn't seem to affect the fish -knock on wood-)
Next we cut wood and made the new wood for the bottom of the stand (other then the frame and a middle brace there was really no bottom to it), scrwed it in, stained it and also siliconed it in (so water doesn't leak through the cracks)
We then cemented the parts we knew were going to be permanent together.
-No pics-
Once we got this done we started to work on the hosing - this was the last piece to the puzzle
After the hosing was done I filled the filtration system up and got it started. It works great and has a nice flow - but I feel it needs some tweaking. The inlet pipe needs to be designed (the piece in the tank which I made so its interchangeable if necessary) it sucks hard from the top holes but not at all from the bottom holes so I am going to redesign it so that it takes in from towards the bottom and there are no holes towards the top to see what happens. I also noticed while there is great flow coming out the beads in the bead filter don't really move at all - I am wondering if its just not a strong enough pump or what is going on (comments/future suggestions are appreciated). This is the first real filtration set-up I've done that is not a sump so we sorta winged it. There are no leaks and everything seems to run fine and the fish are enjoying the flow in the tank now!
While I was at it I sanded down the tank - the wood looked old and bleh and I stained it in cherry - it looks so much better now - like new!
Before:
After:
I used this as an opportunity to set the new filtration system up. I have 2 ocean clear canisters (a bead and a cartridge), a gen x pcx40 pump - not the one in the photo below the pump is blue (1,190gph) as well as a uv sterilizer. I just needed to figure out how I wanted to do this. My husband helped with figuring how to do it. He drew out a plumbing idea and went with it. I bought the pieces we needed and got to work. We got new wood to put underneath the tank to support the filter set up and then put a wood stain/sealant over it (I just decided to do the entire inside of the tank and got a new color for the outside lol). I am not sure how I feel about the end result yet, it works great and the flow is good coming out but it does need some tweaking.
I ll post some photos of what I got and you can see how I set it up.
The first few nights consisted of putting the plumbing together before making it permanent - once that was done we went ahead and put thread tape around the threaded portions. We had a furry helper too...
Next I spent some time on one of my days off working out the inlet and outlet pipe work - cutting the pipe and drilling. I used a design we made for an fx5 on another tank b/c it worked well. I have caps on these to fill/prime if needed.
A few days later on my next day off I painted the inlet/outlet set up black (I used krylon spray paint - I chose this b/c we have used it in the past for tank set ups and it doesn't seem to affect the fish -knock on wood-)
Next we cut wood and made the new wood for the bottom of the stand (other then the frame and a middle brace there was really no bottom to it), scrwed it in, stained it and also siliconed it in (so water doesn't leak through the cracks)
We then cemented the parts we knew were going to be permanent together.
-No pics-
Once we got this done we started to work on the hosing - this was the last piece to the puzzle
After the hosing was done I filled the filtration system up and got it started. It works great and has a nice flow - but I feel it needs some tweaking. The inlet pipe needs to be designed (the piece in the tank which I made so its interchangeable if necessary) it sucks hard from the top holes but not at all from the bottom holes so I am going to redesign it so that it takes in from towards the bottom and there are no holes towards the top to see what happens. I also noticed while there is great flow coming out the beads in the bead filter don't really move at all - I am wondering if its just not a strong enough pump or what is going on (comments/future suggestions are appreciated). This is the first real filtration set-up I've done that is not a sump so we sorta winged it. There are no leaks and everything seems to run fine and the fish are enjoying the flow in the tank now!
While I was at it I sanded down the tank - the wood looked old and bleh and I stained it in cherry - it looks so much better now - like new!
Before:
After:
but it looks solid to me