ok heres the deal, i need to take my canister filter off of my 120 gallon (stocked with 1 oscar and 4 red bellied pacus with 4 big crayfish) and am trying to spend no money. i have a 40 gallon tank, cpr over flow box and tons of gravel. i also have quite a bit of play sand. i have all the pumps and stuff just trying to figure out the best way to filter this tank without spending any money. i also have 1 gallon of 2" bio balls, i know not much but its what i got. any ideas?
diy sump media ?
- Thread starter dde1878
- Start date
i spent all day yesterday building a wet dry will post pics as soon as possible. and yes the 4 pacus are going into a 750 gallon tank, as soon as i have the money for the gel coating.
well i tried, this morning one of my pacus broke my overflow box. heres the build anyways.
First i layed out all the stuff i had for the build, found a tote and an office filing drawer thing. in the first (top) drawer i had my son use a soldering iron and melt a bunch of holes in the center area of the drawers bottom. i then hot glued some real fine mesh i had to the bottom, on the inside of the drawer. this was to try and retain the sand and not letting it wash through the holes. i then drilled two holes in the top drawer, one on the front for a drain if the water level got to high and one on the back to put the tubing from the water feed. i then threw the bio balls into the bottom drawer and drilled 4 holes in the bottom of it for the water to drain. and wallah you have a broke mans sump filter thingy.
First i layed out all the stuff i had for the build, found a tote and an office filing drawer thing. in the first (top) drawer i had my son use a soldering iron and melt a bunch of holes in the center area of the drawers bottom. i then hot glued some real fine mesh i had to the bottom, on the inside of the drawer. this was to try and retain the sand and not letting it wash through the holes. i then drilled two holes in the top drawer, one on the front for a drain if the water level got to high and one on the back to put the tubing from the water feed. i then threw the bio balls into the bottom drawer and drilled 4 holes in the bottom of it for the water to drain. and wallah you have a broke mans sump filter thingy.
now all of this would have been great but heres the problems. the sand still washed through the mesh. so i put gravel in. the next problem was the tote would not fit into the stand so i had to use a smaller one that only held about 12 gallons of water, for a total of 10% sump volume to tank volume.
now tomorrow i will poke a hole in the top of the drawer system to put the water from the overflow box straight into the drawer filter system. i siliconed the overflow and it will be ready tomorrow.