Today's the day
We're switching out all the sumps to the new ones that we built
I figured while we're doing that we might as well do some water changes, which will make change into some sort of easier anyway
Well this tank drains. I'm gonna bring you guys up to speed on the brief version
Of how I did this so first and foremost
drained half the water in the top tank just to give it a water change and to stop water from
Certainly draining down to the sump below from there. I removed all of the media from the existing
Sump and gave it a rinse and aquarium water just to rinse it off
This stuff was actually really dirty draining the sump and then disconnected all the equipment pulling it out
And that was basically it I took the sump outside rinsed it out
Got it
Really clean and then stored it because we will be installing these back in eventually
Took all of that media filled up one of the baskets from the new filter
slid the forty gallon tank back into place connected the pump got everything back up and running pretty straightforward and simple it took about
one hour per rack
Okay, this tank is ready to start and of course I got to drain this sump
So I like to just toss a pump in there that pumps the water out. Well, everything's draining here
I'll start to get the sump ready. I can build these things in
Minutes, it doesn't take me long at all. You know, what actually takes me the longest amount of time and is the most annoying
cleaning up
So once I'm done doing what I got it to the cameras go off, etc
I spend more time cleaning than what you guys watch
Keeping in mind these are your classic 40 gallon aquarium dimensions
3 feet let's call it 36 inches by 18 inches by 16 inches tall holds about 40 gallons
Now the previous Tom's by custom aquariums a seamless sumps that he told about 22 gallons of water giving me 44 gallons total
Technically I'm losing four gallons know how to put this sump together if you haven't watched
How or why I built these go ahead and watch that video link will be down below
And
Gotta keep going though as we wait for that to drain
We're gonna remove all the biological media and place it in this bucket that has some aquarium water in it
We want to keep the bacterial life, even though this tanks only really gonna be empty for you know, maybe a half hour
so one bucket gets the media
One bucket gets the basket and my face gets the sludge
Did you get an idea of what gets things get covered in
Not supposed to look like that just look like that. That's because the manzanita
Substrate
The drain is still kind of leaking some water
These are for water changes
If you guys remember what I initially put all this together turn that down water will gush out of each tank
Depending on which one I turn by 50% I just took the hose up and
Of course we can get this one ready
Now when I initially set this racking system up
I didn't need as much biological media as I did for the rest because we were only running one tank at the time
So
This one's going to have much less than the others
using a marine pure block
I think this is like 10 inches by 10 inches by 4 inches absolutely massive and then of course the bream pure balls, these are
Ridiculously expensive
But when I initially was setting up all the aquariums in the gallery. I was hearing so many things about them
I wanted to try them
Are they good? Yes, very good. Would I buy them again? No
Never again
I'll explain why this is arguably one of the best submersible
Biological media you can get it's extremely porous and lightweight but it is expensive the downside to it is over time
They degrade and crumble away. Look at this one just from sitting flat. You see that completely flat now
These were moving it all in your aquarium where your filtration
They just disintegrate and turn to dust
but in the meantime
Phenomenal biological media. I just I don't mind spending a lot of money on a biological media
I don't mind using
Alternative methods like pot scrubby's or lab rock or pumice anything really porous to be honest with you
I don't I don't mind
But again, I don't mind spending a lot I just want it to last
Many many many years. It's biological media. You shouldn't have to switch it on all the time. Just prints it in tank water
Okay. So yeah, this one's gonna have
Literally half the amount
Biological media the rest of the tanks have I'll have to add some more from some of my other filters to it here shortly
Let's get the idea for now as for the pre-filter
As always
Polyester filling now
What I like to do is make sure the waters gonna hit them into the center or off to the side at some point
but if I cut this to the exact dimensions of the
bottom of this
That means water can probably if the clogs it'll probably just seep over it and get around side of it this way it even prolongs
The use because if this clogs and water source arise it also has to go to the sides of it
I've never encountered that issue, but I
Just want to make sure that the mechanical
Portion is protecting my biological media and maintenance is prolonged
Plus
This is going to filter out all your uneaten food fish waste etc
And I replace this every few days just because you don't see it in your water column
Doesn't mean it's not in the system. You see if it's the water's running through it
It's still polluting the system even though you can't see it
Alright
Pump back on and I'm bringing some water from the top tank just to ensure we get this media submerged once again
And while I fill this tank the something the top tank back up
Why don't we take a look at some of the other filters already up and running so we can see exactly how they work
We'll take a look at the first one I did
And I got a flashlight because we're gonna be fancy
So here's how this works water is entering at the top there as you can see and just zoom you in
as you can see
water flows in and as the water is mechanically filtered and that's just a term to remove all the debris from the water the
needed
uneaten food fish waste
You know, etc. You know what that's for then of course, it has to go through an entire
probably around five gallons of
The bio-balls finally exiting at the bottom efforts been biologically filtered then we have these two massive blocks
so as you can see, like I said
We have twice the amount of media in this filter
And and of course the rest as opposed to the first one then waters returned to the top aquarium via this pump waters return
Right here
Overflows right there down to this aquarium where the water exits right here. And then of course
Overflows through there back down to where we originally saw now, of course
the best part about this is the fact that it's so easy to get in to
Replace this every few days toss it back in the fresh one and that's it
That's it for maintenance on this sump everything else maybe rinse the biological media off
Every couple of months maybe I mean to be honest though. I usually just leave them pretty maintenance pretty almost
So that's it. I guess all the songs have been replaced. Now, of course, I need to do a lots of cleaning
It's much worse than I'm showing on camera a few other little things. I want to work on. Of course
I'm not sure when I'll start them is to clean out here too. Don't look at it
I really got to finish this hump or this filter for the 375. It's working. It's doing a great job
But also I want to build
More filtration here using these two 55-gallon barrels for the 2,000 and clean it up a bit Oh
I'm also going to switch to head plumbing
and of course
Those are just a few little projects that we have on the part on the horizon at some point
If you enjoy these videos make sure you give it a thumbs up if you don't subscribe to this channel yet and you don't want
To miss any of these videos. Well like you got to subscribe. I'll see you guys tomorrow