DIY turbo-siphon

Spaced Cowboy

South Bay Reefer
So I have an in-wall tank that has access "issues". The only access it to the back of the tank and the tank is 40" or so high, and 36" front-to-back. I've somewhat mitigated this by installing a dog-groomers lift behind the tank, and I can get up high and have the full reach of my arm + tool to get to the front of the tank when I need to. Don't get me wrong, I love the tank overall - the "clean" look from the front (it's the only thing on that entire wall) makes any other issues worth it, but it does present challenges, sometimes.

One thing I'd like to have, however is a decent siphon. The size of the tank, and the positioning of the rocks etc. (both of which I love) can make it hard to see exactly what I'm doing if I want to siphon the front of the tank - which means it's a time-consuming activity, which means a lot of tank-water is used up. I don't siphon when water-changing because I have an automatic water-changer (again, love this for the labour-saving aspects) so all the water I siphon out is basically wasted.

I did try putting draining the siphon into the filter-socks part of the return, so the socks would catch the detritus/whatever, but I found that the socks quickly got clogged with the inevitable fine sand pulled in, and it wasn't ideal. They were basically too-fine a filter to be useful for this purpose.

Wayyyy back (no, really, this was a long time ago :) in the mists of time, before I had a reef-tank, I used to have a "professional gravel vacuum" for the freshwater tank, which pumped water out of the tank, through what was essentially a canister filter, and then you could push the cleaned water back into the tank. This seems to be what I'm looking for, but the company went bust, so they're not around any more.

The fact that it's powered means you can clean out the sump as well - you're not depending on gravity to move the water. The bottom of my sump is a prime suspect for why I'm starting to get a cyano outbreak on my sand. I'm going to use the shop-vac to clean out the sump this weekend, but in the long term I'd prefer something a little more targeted and less wasteful of water.

So, I was thinking of DIY'ing that earlier cleaning tool... Here's the general idea

- Have a rigid clear plastic tube, say 3/4" wide for the wand that will skim the surface of the sand. In my case, it'd probably be about 5' long. That then connects (just by friction) to flexible clear plastic tubing that is plumbed to...

- A canister (eg: https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/brs-gfo-carbon-reactor-5-single.html) into which I can place a mechanical filter (not too fine-grained) to trap detritus, algae, etc. Which output is then plumbed into ...

- A high-volume peristaltic pump (eg: http://www.simplypumps.com/pumps/perimax-pumps/pm600.aspx) which can do 6 liters per minute. I'm thinking the peristaltic will be best because then there's nothing that can get into the pump itself, and they don't need priming - although it's possible the pump action itself isn't smooth enough to do a siphon, in which case it might be necessary to just put a normal external pump in, and make it self-priming via plumbing

- Plumb the pump's output to another canister into which I can put a floss or other n-micron filter to polish the water being output. The output of that is then plumbed via another plastic tube to go back into the sump.

Some implementation details:

- The whole thing will be mounted on the wall, with hooks for hoses to be draped over, so it's nice and neat, and it'll make it easier to make the external pump self-priming by simply mounting it lower than the rest of the plumbing.

- I'll want the ability to break the siphon by the canisters, so I can drain off the water that's in the plastic tubing when they need cleaning, without water pouring all over the floor as I unscrew them. Not hard, just make sure the break-point is below the canister-entry point, and there's a drain back to the sump (or sink, possibly). A ball-valve can control that easily enough.

I've found, somewhat to my chagrin, that the easier I make something to do, the more likely I am to do it. If I can set all this up so that it's an easy part of the regular tank maintenance, I think I'll be a lot more motivated to clean out the sump regularly, for example, without having to drain it every time...

Thoughts ?
 
I seriously doubt that canister is big enough.
Personally I would look for a used Canister filter on a freshwater site or Ebay.
The bigger the better & pump the water into a sock to get any real small stuff.
 
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