DIY Wet/Dry

[Dane]

This is my first attempt at a diy wet/dry. This is for a 125g tank. Do you think this will work?

It is using a 16g rubbermaid tote with a smaller tote stacked inside as the drip tray.
Green is from the overflows (using the diy one stickied)
Red is a couple of layers of cut to fit furnace filters
Blue is bio-balls (or scrubbies)
the black square in the right lower corner is the pump.

 

[SRIDENZ]

only suggestion i would make is to some how seperate the pump from the main scrubbie/bioball section, incase some skank or even a bit of scrubby gets sucked up abd damage your return pump.

There is a section on the filtration forum that details roughly how many scrubbies you need per gallon.......... may be worth a read

Top use of paint by the way

 

[slapnutz]

Looks like it should. Instead of using a second tote, why not use a 3 or 5 drawer storage container to house the filtration and bio media? something like this (or similar). If you cut the bottom out, you can use egg crate/light diffuser to hold the bio media in, but let the water flow through the bottom. Then it would need to be elevated somehow, couple pieces of pvc or something.

 

[smokymcjoe]

Looks like it should. Instead of using a second tote, why not use a 3 or 5 drawer storage container to house the filtration and bio media? something like this (or similar). If you cut the bottom out, you can use egg crate/light diffuser to hold the bio media in, but let the water flow through the bottom. Then it would need to be elevated somehow, couple pieces of pvc or something.

this is what i would do.

 

[bitteraspects]

Looks like a wet/wet. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but it looks like all your media is submerged. Where is the second tore?
A submerged media sumo works too. Though as mentioned above, you may want to separate your pump.
You can make a simple cage out of eggcrate to go around the pump.

 

[Dane]

The second tote is the top portion, it acts like the drip tray. I'm going to cut the bottom out of it and put an egg crate diffuser in. I'm going to build it this weekend, so I'll post some pictures.

 

[Dane]

I've got most of it put together and it is turning out pretty good.
One question though. I'm considering how to prevent a flood from a siphon on the pump side. I know I could put a check valve in there, but would a air check valve placed at the same place as the overflows (on top of the 180 that goes out of the tank) allowing air into the system be enough to break the siphon?

 

[slapnutz]

How does your return line go into the tank? The easiest thing to do is drill a hole in whatever part of the return is just below the water line. That way it will drain down a little bit and stop. You have to save some space in the sump for a power outage, as their will be some water going back into the sump.

 

[Dane]

Well I was going to just amend my original post but I can't find the edit button. So here is the semi-completed project. I intend to use cut to fit furnace filter for some of the mechanical filtration (although I'm wondering if it wouldn't work better than scrubbies for bio filter).

The return spray bar. This will sit close to the bottom to keep stuff stirred up.

The top tote will nest inside the bottom one.

The drip bar from the overflows

The top of the whole contraption

Installed under the tank

 

[slapnutz]

Wow...that turned out nice! Definitely a different design, but I like it. Nice and compact.