Need Help Brainstorming Mechanical Filter Baffle

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carsona246

Gambusia
MFK Member
Feb 12, 2009
553
2
18
Arkansas
Just to preface I'm terrible at diy projects, and can't believe I've gotten this far so I'm hoping someone will chime in with their expertise.
I've attached two photos of what I've gotten so far and crude paint drawing of my concept I have the day off and plan to scrub the tank, drill the hole and silicone today, but in order to plan how much space I'll need in my sump I'd like to know how I plan on mechanically filtering out the water that comes over the baffle. I'm having a rough time making any solid ideas, at the moment i"m playing with pvc pipe stand with egg crate with some filter material on top for mechanical filtration, but I don't know if the water flow will be enough to do anything but fall over the side.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome, running out to home depot today to brainstorm as well.

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Tank Idea.png
 
millerkid519 said:
Buy the filter socks and measure the inner ring on the filter sock and use a hole saw to cut the correct size hole you want one piece of acrylic vertical in the baffle chamber
Click to expand...
There is many ways to do this. This is the best option though. I've seen people just add pvc to the inlet and hook it on there.

I personally don't use socks because my sump came with a tray for filter floss. It's so easy to use I just slide it out change it and I'm good. I never touch the bio balls but once every few months ill move it around to take out some debris.

I usually keep a sponge filter in the sump too but thats mainly for me to cycle a tank or use it in a bucket if I need to do a salt bath or something
 
after an embarrassingly long attempt at siliconing this is what I've got together, made a diffuser out of pvc pipe. Looking Into filter socks right now to see if that would work, I'm thinking my intake from the baffle is going to be too wide, is that not the case?

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Just wonder has anyone ever used the Eheim Efimech (green nylon padding) as a filter material for sump. That stuff never break down and I have had the same stuff for 20 years.
 
You can have all of the bio media in the world... and the more, the worse it will be.. if you don't have good mechanical filtration before your bio media, then you turn your bio media in to an unstoppable nitrate factory. I made that mistake on my second wet dry sump build. My first was small enough to clean more easily. I had about 8 gallons of bio balls in 2 5 gallon buckets. My second was about 20g of bio balls in a 30g trash can sitting in a 75g tank. A filter pad just doesn't do the same thing as a sock. After a couple of months my nitrates would stay high even after a couple of 50% water changes in a week. I was running all of the water in my tank through a bio tower that was full of crap. I had plenty of bio media to handle it, so it turned it all in to nitrates, but there was just a ton of it. A filthy filter is terrible for a tank.

Then my last build I had 60g of bio balls in two towers with 4 feet of trickle a piece. Being that high, i couldn't submerge my filter socks so I just hung them up. Either way, those bio towers never saw solid waste.
 
Either way... I'm having trouble understanding what exactly you're trying to do with that sump based on your pictures.
 
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