What do you think of this for a filter??

[Truxx1956]

Hey guys, I'm tryin to get a bigger filter for my 125 gal. tank. I currently have 2 Oddysea 700 filters on it but they've steadly been slowing down. I have mostly parrot cichlids and a few other fish in this tank and it may be a little over crowded but the filters have never been able to do what I thought was a "great" job. I might just bite the bullet and get a couple of FX5's? But I thought I had seen on here where someone had said something about using pool sand filters. I also saw an Intex filter pump while searching pool pumps/filters too and thought I saw someone on here that had one of them with somekind of inline filter media using that pump? HELP!! Please. I DONT want a sump and all that mess to deal with. That is totally out of the question. I like something self contained and neat under my stand. I know some of you have some of them that are very neat but I just dont want to go that way.

Here's the link to the filter I found on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEX-1200-...693?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35c11c2075

 

[Oughtsix]

I have never used a sand filter on an aquarium but I do have one on my swimming pool (18" Hayward sand filter with a 1.5hp pump). After having worked with a swimming pool DE filter on my aquarium I will be changing my swimming pool filter over to a DE filter. The DE filters do a much better job and filter out much smaller particles. Sand filters require constant back washing to keep them flowing. During the summer I have to back wash my sand filter every day or two. I would estimate that every back wash takes about 30 to 40 gallons of water.

I love the Hayward EC40 DE swimming pool filter that I use on my aquarium. My tank water is always perfectly clear and it is the lowest maintenance aquarium filter I have ever used. The EC40 is also very affordable (There is a link to the amozon vendor I bought mine from in my signature). My EC40 started on my crowded 110g tank. That tank sprang a slow leak so now I am using it on my little 35 hex tank.

When I had the EC40 on my 110 I used a good quality efficient 1/8hp mag drive external pump. This gave me all the flow I could ever need for my 110g. On my 35 I use the EC40 with a little QuietOne 3000 pump. The EC40 was designed to be used with a 1hp - 2hp pool pump. My biggest concern was that it would not work properly with a small pump. It does work very well with a small pump. Even the QuietOne 3000 has plenty of flow to coat the filter screens in the EC40 with the DE powder (DE powder is very fine).

The sand pool you linked to looks like it uses a pretty cheap 1/4hp direct drive pump. The impeller shaft seal on direct drive pumps are usually a source of leakage problems. When the pump is outside running on a swimming pool a little leakage doesn't hurt anything. I would also fear the efficiency of that pump. Cheap motors in cheap pumps suck a lot of electricity.

Here is a picture of the EC40 on my temporary 35g hex setup.


The horizontal handle on the top of the filter is to knock the DE powder off of the internal filter screens to regenerate it. About once a week a shut off the pump, pump this handle a couple of times then plug the pump back in. I am now over a year on the initial charge of the DE powder.

The QuietOne 3000 is submersed in the sump. Since you don't want a sump you could easily run an external pump and go directly from the tank to the pump then through the EC40 and back into the tank. I ran this configuration for a few months on my 110g and it worked very well. You will need some sort of in tank prefilter to keep the fish from being sucked into the filter. This one was cheap and available at home depot in their pond department:



There is a link to my build thread in my signature.

 

[Truxx1956]

Hey man, thanks alot. I was at a petstore yesterday and found a pond filter/pump that said it was a magdrive 7 and had 700 GPH for $120. Would this be an adequate pump for the EC40 filter? I have been looking at the wet/dry sump setups and I am trying real hard to understand them. My main paranoia is that it will mess up and drain all my water out all over the floor. I dont quite understand how it keeps from overpumping the "sump" tank with water to the point of flooding it?? I've watched a few youtube videos but they mostly focus on the building of the tanks and the stuff like that not the plumbing. (Very confused on that) I did see something about a siphon tank that goes behind the tank and I think this has something to do with it? Can you please explain this or give me a link? And also tell me about the size of that pump I mentioned. Thanks so much.

 

[Oughtsix]

A Magdrive 7 is much larger than my QuietOne 3000 and smaller than the 1/8th hp pump I used on my 110g. It should work very well. Magdrive is the name of a manufacture. Magnet drive pumps are pumps in which the impeller isn't directly coupled to the motor by a shaft. Instead the motor has a magnet on the end of the motor shaft that spins a magnet in the impeller without directly touching the impeller. This eliminates a major source of leakage, the impeller shaft seal. Many manufacturers make magnet drive pumps and the majority of aquarium pumps are magnetic drive.

You can run the EC40 without a wet/dry sump, but a sump does a very nice job of biological filtration and aerating the water. The sump concept is pretty simple. Water is pumped from the sump into your aquarium. It then overflows the aquarium and falls back into the sump. To control the overflow from the tank a pipe is put into the tank lower than the rim of the tank. The water overflows into this pipe down to the sump instead of over the rim of the tank.

There are some siphon based overflows that make it so you don't have to drill a hole in the side of your tank. I prefer drilling a hole in the side of my tanks to the siphon based overflows because they are simpler and pretty much fool proof. I started with a diy siphon based overflow pipe and it worked ok (the big white pipe in the picture of my tank above. I have since drilled that tank and gotten rid of the siphon based overflow pipe).

There is always a bit more water "in system" than is in the sump when everything is running. When the pump stops the "in system" water drains down into the sump and the sump water level rises by a couple inches or so. So you just have to make sure that the running water level in your sump is low enough that when the pump stops the sump doesn't overflow. When the power to the pump returns water is pumped into the aquarium and it then overflows back into the sump.

 

[Truxx1956]

Ahhhhhh. That makes more sense now. But you wouldn't have to drill the tank, you could potentialy make a tube that is basically a "skimmer" like a swimming pool for your top pickup tube, you wouldn't have to have a siphon box and all that? The reason I ask it, I have my tank almost against the wall. I only have about 2 1/2" at the most between the tank and the wall. So its TIGHT. I really don't want to break it down and move it out from the wall and don't really have room out to move it out from the wall anyway. Its a small house. Its almost too big for the house anyway. But I might just go with that other pump and filter that you have and build a sump later? I think the brand of that pond pump was a Danner? Does that sound right?? Thanks again for your help. That was what I needed dude.

 

[Oughtsix]

Yep, I believe Danner is a very respected brand of pump... but I have never used one myself.

Pretty much the only two ways I am aware of to do an overflow is to drill the tank or use a siphon based overflow. The siphon based overflows come in many different designs but they all operate in the same basic fashion. For a sump you need some sort of overflow. I like sumps because of the amount of oxygen they add to the water.

Using the sponge pre-filter on a closed loop (no sump) EC40 DE filter works very well. When you are using an overflow you are pretty much confined to surface skimming. With a closed loop system you can put the intake at the bottom of the tank where all the muck lives. This is a significant advantage for tank cleanliness I miss having with my current surface skimming sump/overflow setup. I suspect that a continuously running closed loop (no sump) EC40 filter would make a great biological filter as well as the best mechanical filter I have ever used. DE has a huge surface area. A huge surface are is what beneficial bacteria need to grow. But what happens to the beneficial bacteria when you eventually have to change the DE powder? Either way I was very happy with my EC40 when I was running it closed loop (no sump). It was infinitely superior to any other mechanical filter I have ever run!