What do you think of my sump?

Doahh

New member
This i for my 90 gallon tank... While I have my Base DIY rock going over to live rock (I heard 6 months) I'll run a Bio Ball trickle filter... 2 separate sets of bio balls so I can alternate cleaning them every week...
showphoto.php

it's 3'9" long
1'6" high
12"deep...
The first baffle is now only 9" tall
the fuge is 1'7" of the length

there are 2 separate inputs... the left is the fuge the right is the skimmer... they both drain into the pump return (off center)
do you think this would cost a lot for tap plastics to make?
 
Tap plastics won't make anything for liquids, Many have tried to get them to and they simply refuse to take on the liability for things that hold water and such.

If you are going to use Bio Balls I would NOT clean them off every week. You would be resetting all the bacteria on them.
If you really want to clean them I would suggest only removing half at a time EX: remove half the balls clean them, put them back in, then 2-3 weeks later pull out the OTHER balls and clean them.

I completely KILL Live rock and then bring it back to life ready for a tank in like 1 month or at most a month and a half.

If you give your vat of new (Fake) LR Good water and like a small starter piece that has bacteria on it, and then some ammonia to start working on, it will start the cycle.
Once all levels are down except Nitrate (will never go all the way down) it's tank ready.

I make LR in 5G buckets with just a heater and a power head, all the time.

Hope that helps some.
 
Well what I meant by tap plastics making it was would it cost a lot to get the plastic? I have the time... summer vacation
 
oh so it would only take the cycle to make the fake LR Live?
i need an RODI water filter... I use a well. To cycle the fake rock to get the PH of the Portland cement down could I use my well water?
I was also looking at the typhoon 3 RODI unit... would this be good?
 
I LOVE my Typhoon III.
I don't know about the PH thing? Perhaps that's the 6 months?
I can't imagine that though..

Yeah once it's cured (Cycled) it's normally ready for a tank.
But I don't know anything about the PH issue, That's out of my knoweldge scope.

Kick a PM over to Airinhere on this forum, he makes his own "LR" to get nice caves and such and he could prolly tell you ALL you need to know about when it's safe and what PH issues you might have.
 
The PH thing is 1-1.5 months... add that to the other 1-1.5 months... June July August... Hooray for August!
 
Here is a sump that we made last year. You might get some ideas from it (or not :)). You will also usually find it significantly cheaper to buy a used acrylic tank and turn it into a sump than to build one from the ground up.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=835341


Best of luck to you :)

Oh, and we started our last tank with 100% base rock and only LR rubble. Too many nasties come in on LR pieces. Once you dry out that LR for a month, it is basically base rock :). You can't tell that our tank was started with base rock and not LR. You won't regret the decision :).
 
No both cycles can not be done at the same time that I know of... the PH setup requires daily fresh water changes... a cycle requires none
 
The massive RV batteries and inverters are out of frame for that picture. I can keep the entire tank running, minus the lights and heater (but still chiller) for 2 - 3 days. But that would really end up being closer to 36 hours, since one of the batteries would also double for running our household stuff (fans, fridge, etc). and I likely wouldn't run the skimmer, so add another 12+ hours onto my estimate :).

Not to mention the vortecs have their own battery backup. :)
 
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