today i fired up my 400 gallon 10'x2.5'x2.5' that i've been working on for the last 3 weeks! and everything worked!!!! Moved it into my basement last weekend with a lot of help!! and then this past week was installing all the plumbing and this weekend was moving sand and decorations and plugging everything in.
Theres a few things i still need to do... right now i have slate on a couple pieces of driftwood that refuse to sink, so the tank is not decorated permanently and the positioning of the powerheads are not set, until the decor is set. Another mistake was in my excitement to fill it with water i forgot to shim and level the tank, and although its luckily very close, one side is about 1/4 inch higher than the other, thus 1 overflow gets less flow, but hopefully with a little help i'll level it out.
Not planning on moving any fish in for a few days.... my basement is dusty so i want the water to filter for a while, and i want to do a waterchange before i put them in as well. Also my overflows are only half full with bioballs since i plan on taking the rest from my current set up to move the cycling process along much faster
The tank has a 125 gallon as the sump, and a 40 gallon 3 compartment sump inside to hold all the bio media. The center compartment has 2 drains while the other 2 compartments only have 1 each. The 4, 1 inch drains are corrugated pond tubing, which i liked since it is flexable and doesnt kink, although cutting it was a bit difficult.
The return line was a bit of a pain. I bought a laguna max flow 4280 gph submersible pump. I originally was going to use the 1" corrugated pond tubing, but decided to buy clear 1.25" tubing with the weave inside for strength. I have many elbows and zip ties to support the heavy tubing and used huge zipties to attach the tubing to the pump under water. Still need to drill a little hole in the return line, cause the back syphon is insane!!! my buddy reminded me to do this, thank goodness!
Any way heres a few pics
sump...
return...
electrical disaster!
the tank...
Sent from my DROID RAZR using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
Theres a few things i still need to do... right now i have slate on a couple pieces of driftwood that refuse to sink, so the tank is not decorated permanently and the positioning of the powerheads are not set, until the decor is set. Another mistake was in my excitement to fill it with water i forgot to shim and level the tank, and although its luckily very close, one side is about 1/4 inch higher than the other, thus 1 overflow gets less flow, but hopefully with a little help i'll level it out.
Not planning on moving any fish in for a few days.... my basement is dusty so i want the water to filter for a while, and i want to do a waterchange before i put them in as well. Also my overflows are only half full with bioballs since i plan on taking the rest from my current set up to move the cycling process along much faster
The tank has a 125 gallon as the sump, and a 40 gallon 3 compartment sump inside to hold all the bio media. The center compartment has 2 drains while the other 2 compartments only have 1 each. The 4, 1 inch drains are corrugated pond tubing, which i liked since it is flexable and doesnt kink, although cutting it was a bit difficult.
The return line was a bit of a pain. I bought a laguna max flow 4280 gph submersible pump. I originally was going to use the 1" corrugated pond tubing, but decided to buy clear 1.25" tubing with the weave inside for strength. I have many elbows and zip ties to support the heavy tubing and used huge zipties to attach the tubing to the pump under water. Still need to drill a little hole in the return line, cause the back syphon is insane!!! my buddy reminded me to do this, thank goodness!
Any way heres a few pics
sump...
return...
electrical disaster!
the tank...
Sent from my DROID RAZR using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
