Oh I see... I answered my own question. You put the bio balls in the chambers and then you flip the other two drip trays over like the first one. Then there are three inlets, one per box/chamber.
Overflow Prefilter
- Thread starter danrawl29
- Start date
I pre-filter on my bio tower. I just make a cup like shape with the filter media (cut extra large for the space). It works great and is cheap when bought in bulk. It's easy to change out, no cleaning, I just throw the dirty media away and cut another piece of the huge roll I bought. I put this stuff in every one of my overflows right on top of the bioballs.
In my opinion the only thing about doing it inside the overflow is that it could possibly clog up if not watched daily. Egon does the water just run outside the filter when it clogs up or do you have a bypass on there that I don't see. Or maybe you keep a good eye on it... 
I threw together a pic. I may have missed something. See what the guys think. Your going to have to make some type of pre-filter before the sump kinda like the bucket idea and similar to Egons. Putting filters inside your sump would be a pain in the butt to change. You would have to remove all 3 covers just to get to the filters.
I threw together a pic. I may have missed something. See what the guys think. Your going to have to make some type of pre-filter before the sump kinda like the bucket idea and similar to Egons. Putting filters inside your sump would be a pain in the butt to change. You would have to remove all 3 covers just to get to the filters.I do on my 450. I put egg crate (light diffuser) over the bulkhead in the overflow. Then filled it almost to the top with bio-balls and put the filter floss/media right on top of the bio-balls.
My 450 is 30" top to bottom so thats a great wet/dry bio tower and prefilter for my sump
Sent from my DROIDX using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
In my opinion the only thing about doing it inside the overflow is that it could possibly clog up if not watched daily. Egon does the water just run outside the filter when it clogs up or do you have a bypass on there that I don't see. Or maybe you keep a good eye on it...
View attachment 775698
Very good question. Yes it can/will clog up. I put a 1" pipe in a corner just above the filter floss. If the filter floss gets clogged then the water will bypass and go down the 1" pipe through the bio-balls and down to the sump. I may add another pipe just incase after thinking about it with you guys still -
Sent from my DROIDX using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
In my opinion the only thing about doing it inside the overflow is that it could possibly clog up if not watched daily. Egon does the water just run outside the filter when it clogs up or do you have a bypass on there that I don't see. Or maybe you keep a good eye on it...
View attachment 775698
WOOOOOOOOW!!!!!! That's awesome man! This helps a lot!
Is the bypass ball valve a 3-way?
No the bypass valve is not three way it is there to run water over the bio balls so the bacteria doesn't die if you have to clean or do a water change. Close the valve going to the tank and open the bypass valve and the water just circulates through the sump only and your bacteria doesn't die on the bio balls.
