Ghetto giant canister with pumps and buckets?

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knifegill

knifegill

Peacock Bass
MFK Member
Sep 19, 2005
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Oscar Tummy
I've inherited two giant pumps. I'm thinking I'll only need one, so here are the specs on it:
GEN-X Water Pump
Model PCX40
19.84gpm
1190gph
max. head 6.8m. 22ft.
"Single Phase induction motor, capacitor run."
Clearly I have no idea where to draw the line about relevant info.
Speed 3000rpm
blah blah blah, I think we have enough here.

What I'd like to do is take two buckets of differing size and insert one into the other, so that the mouth of the smaller bucket is on the floor of the larger bucket. I'd seal the point of contact, drill a hole through the bottom of the large bucket into the small bucket. The small bucket would be full of holes and act as a screen to keep the media (bioballs, sponges) inside the larger bucket. Then a lid would go onto the large bucket with a hole drilled where water from the tank would enter. I am wondering if it is better to put the pump before the canister or after it, and what other considerations might be involved here?
 
Alright. This Saturday I'm going to Lowe's and tracking down hose fittings. I'll put the pump before the canister to make it easier to start the flow. I'll probably just fill the bucket with scrubbies and aquaclear sponges and install a 1/4" mesh outside the small bucket to prevent clogging. Any other thoughts? Pressure factors or anything?

Is the lack of responses due to fear of being blamed when this thing blows up?
 
Im not sure how this is gonna work but id like to see you do it. Either its gonna be a good filter or something fun for the rest of us to hear about if its a disaster. Good luck.
 
Hmm I actually tryed this with a mag 5 (500 gph) and the presure was so great it blew the lid off the bucket..... It would probaby only work if you had 500lbs of weight on top of the lid so the water couldent get out.
 
Oh. So I might need a sturdier container or a weaker pump, right?
If I put the pump after the bucket would it be working too hard?
What if I left enough room for water to flow freely through the center and meshed the media back from the center column against the walls of the bucket? Then water would rush through and the biomedia would still get plenty of exposure. It wouldn't be mechanical at all, then, just biological.

What if I put this pump before the bucket and the other, slightly weaker pump just after the bucket?
 
how about if you don't put a lid on the bucket? use an overflow to drain down into the bucket something like this?? this seams pretty doable to me...any thoughts?

filter2.jpg
 
I was just working on my 125 gal which has the same pump. It's pretty damn powerful and even large threaded fittings with several wraps of Teflon tape are leaking under the pressure. The water pressure will find any weakness and blast through it. Look at the lockrings for the lids of Nuclear and Ocean Clear filters. They're very heavy duty and compress a big O-ring. Some buckets siliconed together aren't going to hold up.

I'd just get an Ocean Clear 354 filter and attach that to the pump. Get a big wrench and a lot of Teflon tape, too. It'll cost like $160 but it'll probably be better than spending $50 on DIY parts, putting in hours of work, having it all blow apart, cleaning up the flood, throwing the $50 of parts in the dumpster, and spending $160 on an Ocean Clear filter anyway.

A Mak4 would empty a sump pretty quickly so you'd have to have a pretty big sump and heavy duty overflow to keep up. Such an overflow would have to 2-3 tubes and are quite a bit more expensive (~$200) than the singles. The amount of flow would fill a bucket within seconds. If you had filter media the diameter of the bucket, it wouldn't pass enough water (especially when dirty) and it'd overflow then you'd need to build a bypass...
 
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