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My 6x2x2 tank Journal


rosco

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Hi Rosco,

I use quite a few laguna pumps and have found them extremely reliable, quite and low power rating compared to output. I would personally get a higer capacity pump for a tank that size. What are you planning to put in it?

Grant

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Thanks Grant

At this stage it will be pretty heavily loaded with my malawi's colonies (Yellows, Maingano, Afra Cobue and A "Nkomo Reef"). But down the track it could change to Tropheus Maswa's and Chipimbi or a full one tang commuity tank. So I guess that I am aiming for high quality filtration. I am not sure if a 6000 lph would be too much but I will have a have a 32mm durso stand pipe outlet (since that landscaping place Craig recommended came through with the bulkheads thanks Craig :thumb ).

I have also been considering Pentair Quiet one as seen http://www.thereefshop.com.au/index.php?ma...mp;filter_id=44'>Pentair quiet one as I have heard their older models were fantastic and super quiet. So if anyone ahs had experience to these newer models of this pump that would be great as well.

cheers

rosco

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hi,

I have an ocean runner 6500 (bought from johnny wheelin' deelin' fleet with some tanks and racks) that has lasted well and seems to work pretty well but it's proving remarkably difficult to find a replacement impellor so I'd be careful with them.

Can ya both the laguna or pentair and tell me how they go 'cos I can't decide and I need some bunny to check 'em out for me :thumb

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Hi Rosco

I recently setup a 6x2x2 with a sump all very similar to your setup except I have 25mm return pipe in the weir.

I have an Ocean Runner 3500 on this tank & I have been very happy with the pump & water quality.

HTH Dave

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thanks guys for all the responses :thumb . If anyone out there has experience with pentair that would be great. At this stage I am 49% OR 51% Laguna :lol3:

I recently setup a 6x2x2 with a sump all very similar to your setup except I have 25mm return pipe in the weir.

Dave,

Did what size sump did you go for I am looking into dimensions and water volume capacity do you have? I am also investigating water volume and potential overflow issues.

I have no experience with the pentair but I love my Laguna pumps

How quite are these this will be in the house and so I have been told that it must be wisper quiet.

Can ya both the laguna or pentair and tell me how they go 'cos I can't decide and I need some bunny to check 'em out for me

Love being a crash test dummy :lol4:

cheers

rosco

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I think mine (Max Flo 7500) is quiet but I don't have a big care factor about the noise levels - it is a lot quieter than the el-cheapo pumps I have on other tanks.

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I have an OR6500 and its in my lounge room.

It is quiet, reliable and has been going strong without a clean for over 18 months. I can PM you an online store that has all parts (although i have never needed any).

I will be keen to try a laguna shortly, as they seem to get a good wrap.

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I have an OR6500 and its in my lounge room.

It is quiet, reliable and has been going strong without a clean for over 18 months. I can PM you an online store that has all parts (although i have never needed any).

I will be keen to try a laguna shortly, as they seem to get a good wrap.

I second huzzy. I got the OR 6500, and it does the job nicely. It's not the quietest piece of equipment in the tank, but the noise it does make is barely noticeable. It provides excellent water flow in the tank (I often feel sorry for the small fish having to constantly swim just to stay still) and I'm glad I went with the slightly higher litreage/hour. Power consumption would be my only query... from memory it was around 115w.

All the best with your project Rosco... I had so much fun setting up mine, and I look forward to seeing what ideas you come up with.

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  • 2 weeks later...

hi all,

Time for an update. I have finalised my design an nrrowed it down to 2 versions. Here they are

IPB Image

IPB Image

I will most like go for the latter version.

Now to pumps after dpoing some research and stealing some otheres I will now probably be looking at OR, Pentair or ehiem. Does anyone have experiences with ehiem or Pentair?

cheers

rosco

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Actually, you'd get more flow rate out of your gravity drain if it drops into air rather than under water - that backpressure might add up to more than you'd think it would

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Actually, you'd get more flow rate out of your gravity drain if it drops into air rather than under water - that backpressure might add up to more than you'd think it would

Yeah agreed, i believe that the water falling into air also creates low pressure/vacume in the pipe and thus encourages more water flow again. The down side is noise. :)

I cant see any difference between the two pics???? Is this like "spot the difference" ??

Personally i would use a spinner to feed the water to your bio balls with no wool or foam on top. This will increase your oxygen saturation.

Use the extra space (by moving the bio ball tower to the left) to add another 1 or 2 chambers of mechanical filtration followed by your existing 2 chambers of bio filtration.

Thats the exact same design I will be getting made in the next month or so for my main display.

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I can't see a difference in either design either.

If your bioballs are underwater as both diagrams depict, as I have said dozens of times on ACE over the years, forget about using them. They will NOT be the best choice, go instead with Matrix. Bioballs need to be set up with water trickling through them if not their upside of O2 exchange (by their free access to O2 when water is trickling through them) will be neutralised, and their lack of surface area compared to such media as Matrix will dominate their features.

Choosing the pump is one of the first things I would have done as this will decide what size hole you have drilled. Hope this dosn't pin you into a pump choice.

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By adding colour I had hoped to clarifiy stuff obviously I only confused it. :lol3:

The inlet will be submerged to reduce noise, It is in the house and there are powers at work far great than me to see the sump kid safe covered and silent :lol3: . I have seen sumps like this working and they are super quiet. I am not a fan of spray bars especially with not a mechanical fitreation. The idea is to run the inlet into the sump, the chamber fills up and the overflows onto a drip tray and then makes it's way through the sponges bio balls etc. Again I have seen this in action and it works nicely.

If your bioballs are underwater as both diagrams depict, as I have said dozens of times on ACE over the years, forget about using them. They will NOT be the best choice, go instead with Matrix. Bioballs need to be set up with water trickling through them if not their upside of O2 exchange (by their free access to O2 when water is trickling through them) will be neutralised, and their lack of surface area compared to such media as Matrix will dominate their features.

Choosing the pump is one of the first things I would have done as this will decide what size hole you have drilled. Hope this dosn't pin you into a pump choice.

All things going to plan, the water level will fluctuate just below the bio ball chamber, so it should be Ok. If it doesn't maybe I will thinnk of somethig to raise the chamber a little. I certainly had no intention of thinking it will work if submerged given the amount of reading I have done ;) .

I will take that little blue line above the biochamber out as it was just supposed to indicate that the water will overflow into the chamber and then drip through. It was supposed to highlight the fact that it should NOT overflow into the matrix chamber.

I will also be using enough matrix as I love the stuff I just am trying tomake sure that the water is pretty clean before it gets to the matrix chamber . Someone recommended sintered glass as well for the second chamber. Is that stuff any good?

Unforunately, due to the backward nature of the ACT, I was limited in the hole size that I could get drilled in the tank, 25mm or 45mm. Unless I travelled to Sydney to get the tank, and I couldn't do that. So I ended up getting the biggest I could, a 45mm hole. I have purchased a 32mm bulkhead from the landscape place you recommended, it fits, so thanks for that. So guess with regards to pump size I guess I am stuck with a pump around 3-6000 litres I guess. But at this stage I am more after brands ATM size comes next.

Oh and the difference being that the inlet chamber has an extra glass divider that is closer to the bio chamber. It is not to scale but I should have made it closer to the chamber. It is not a big difference but someone recommended the extra chamber to force the water up first to start removing the "sediment". personally I don't think it will make a difference :dntknw:

cheers

rosco

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I'd ditch the bio balls, put more sponge & filter wool as prefilter and add more matrix. I recently changed my 3ft bio balls sump (~1000 balls) and to matrix style. Better results...

Pump: try OASE...expensive but worth the money, can't hear it's running

Cheers...

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Oh and the difference being that the inlet chamber has an extra glass divider that is closer to the bio chamber. It is not to scale but I should have made it closer to the chamber. It is not a big difference but someone recommended the extra chamber to force the water up first to start removing the "sediment". personally I don't think it will make a difference :dntknw:

Oh ok, i saw that. I didnt think that was it as its not really a structural change or a change in the water flow, just an extra bit of glass. I doubt it will do anything other than make it a pain in the buM to get your hand down there to pick something up or clean up.

So what have you got against spinners?

Another option would be to remove the bio balls altogether and replace with mountains of matrix in identical chambers that you already have the matrix in. That way you can change the filter media between mechanical and biological easily as you work out the needs of the tank.

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I'd ditch the bio balls, put more sponge & filter wool as prefilter and add more matrix. I recently changed my 3ft bio balls sump (~1000 balls) and to matrix style. Better results...

Great idea. I have one sump with a trickle section and one sump without. I prefer the sump without and it's quieter too.

Another option would be to remove the bio balls altogether and replace with mountains of matrix in identical chambers that you already have the matrix in. That way you can change the filter media between mechanical and biological easily as you work out the needs of the tank.

Yes, a matrix style filter is much easier to clean, and it's very easy to clean some of the chambers but not all of them, so you have no worries about losing all of your bacteria.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi all,

I has been a long time since I first started this never ending project but every weekend something else got the way. I got my sump built by a local guy and while not the best looking construction I think that it will be effective (once I touch up the silcone in places <_<). Last weekend I finally stuck the background on the tank and set up the sump. This weekend I intend on plumbing it and then hopefully filling full of water.

IPB Image

sump

IPB Image

cheers

rosco

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I also saw this extra sheet of glass, but belatedly so. I don’t see it making a huge difference.

When comparing different biological medias, bioballs win hands down. Not because they have a greater surface area, because in fact they don’t. Their claim to fame is due to effectively increasing the foot print size of your tank in regards to O2 exchange. In addition, with the seemingly ever increasing likelihood of blackouts, provided the bioballs stay moist, which they will do trapped between a layer of wet filter wool and the surface water of the sump, the bacteria will not die. These two facts, alone will make bioballs greatly more positive than any submerged media regardless of the surface area. The surface area deficiency of bioballs is simply overcome by allowing a sump to have a big enough chamber to have more bioballs.

If you can have both matrix and bioballs, best of both worlds. Sintered glass such as Eheim’s Efisubstrat is just a surface area, as is Matrix. Matrix won’t break down if handled roughly, and as it comes in larger sizes (particularly Pond Matrix) holds the potential to do denitrification. Efisubstat can’t do this, nor the sintered glass that Aquasonic sells.

A well cleaned water flow, will be clean before they get to the biochamber, and the biochamber will not need cleaning. My big tank has been set up for something like two years, and I can see no signs of needing cleaning, in either bioballs or Matrix. I would agree that Matrix would be easier to clean, but perhaps before criticising bioballs for their greater cleaning difficulty :lol2: we should look at our sump/mechanical filtration design?

If you clean what ever bio media with waste water from your tank, you can clean the whole lot with impunity.

Rosco- with the eggcrate in the Matrix chambers, in mine, I have put a single layer of kamaharda biomat to prevent the Matrix falling through. This as you know is just a biological media itself, though because is can also be used as a mechanical media, will make a good barrier to prevent smaller pieces of Matrix falling through, and you'll still have a biological media in your biochambers.

Craig

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Thanks all

Craig, as you mentioned I have the bio ball chamber for several reasons one is for O2 exchange and for mechanical filtration. As luck would have it I happen to have 10 litres of Pond Matrix so a fair bit of that will make it way into bio chambers ;) . So hopefully the water will be pretty clean before it hits the matrix. I intended on getting Koi matting for the bio ball chamber so do you think should invest in say 2 sheets of that and replace the egg crate in the matrix chambers.

I am not sure even if this sump design will work as I hope. If it doesn't I will get a matrix style sump made up in Sydney. This sump won't go to waste if this is the case conveniently it fits under my rack for my system :yes:;) .

I going to make the durso today and then cover the weir with fake rock wall and then see how I am going by the end of the week I hope to get this bad boy up and running finally.

cheers

rosco

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  • 2 months later...

Hi All,

I finally had the guts to turn the bad boy one and touch wood it appears to be going well. The only noise I am getting is fall of the water within the down pipe and every half an hours or so it gurgles. Ocean runners are the bomb and Mrs Rossco is quite happy so I am happy.

Now I am going to try and fine tune the durso but I am not sure which way to go. If the gurgle still happens does this mean that I have make the hole a little larger or have I started too big (2mm). ATM the fall is around 30cm before it starts to build up within the pipe (the advantage of haing a clear midsection ) and the water is still falling over the weir around 1-2cm. So if I need to drill a bigger hole to raise the water level and let more air out, what effect would that have if I up the pump size (currently 3500LPH) to say 5000lph?

here are some recent photos

Sump

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IPB Image

My version of durso

IPB Image

I will get some more photos in the a few days

cheers

rosco

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