Hi, everybody Joey here again, and welcome back so in today's video. I'm going to show you something that I like to call the internal
aquarium sump however, it's truly inspired by the
Corner [Matan] filter if you're not familiar with what one of those higher essentially they are just
Sponge that is held securely in place in the corners with pieces of Glass or acrylic
Whatever your tank is made out of we've actually made a regular mat and filter in the past
So if you're not familiar with what one of these are I?
suggest you probably watch that first you [can] even say that this is simply a
Supercharged Corner [Matan] filter the supplies that are actually quite minimal. You'll need some silicone
You'll need some one inch filter foam
and you'll also need a bucket the taller the better or tools you will need a simple razor blade and
A drill other tools and things that you might [see] in this video are entirely optional
But all you really need are these two tools to start out you need to cut the bottom off your bucket now
You can do this with a razor blade, but to save time
I simply used my
Table saw with the bottom cut off we can now size it to our aquarium
You want to place the bucket on top of your aquarium and kind of gauge?
How much of a wedge you're going to need?
Basically you want to keep in mind that you need to accommodate a pump and heaters or anything else you really want to put behind
This then cut it may even use power tools to do this
But again a simple razor blade will cut a bucket with the wedge cut out you'll notice that there's also a lip to the bucket
And you'll need to cut that off personally I like to use a combination of wire cutters and a razor blade
However a razor blade will do it all it
Just takes a little bit of elbow grease now you're left with a perfectly formed wedge the thing about these buckets though
Is that they are limited to their height? [so] if you have an aquarium taller than your wedge?
You're going to need to do something about it since you have so much bucket leftover
You could take another little piece of it and create your wedge to be as long as you want
Simply silicone them together if that's the case wait 24 hours
And then move on to this [next] step the next step is drilling holes into the wedge [you'll] want the holes to be about six
Millimeters in diameter you'll also want to drill as many as you can to allow as much flow through this as possible now
The big problem with buckets is that they come in a limited amount of colors if you're lucky
You'll find the color you want
But [a] lot of the times you'll be stuck with a white bucket and white tends not to work with most aquariums
[so] what your next step can be and what you should consider doing is sanding it down and then spraying it with Krylon fusion for
plastic
I suggest using a matte finish
So it blends into the aquarium [more] this way you get whatever color you want now according to [Krylon] their paint is
100% Non-toxic
once it cures
however
You do need to give it a full seven days to entirely cure the only thing they don't do is rate it for underwater use
Which means it could potentially chip off over time?
So that's why we sand it first
so you definitely want to make sure you sand it to allow the paint a better surface to stick to
once you've allowed the paint to dry you can go ahead and
silicone it in place in your aquarium now mind you this doesn't have to be a
Corner filter we put it in the corner because it requires a small wedge and taking up a corner is the least
obstructive in the aquarium
With that said if you make a bigger wedge you can place this wherever you want to including a side or back wall
That's what I really like about this filter
It's not only entirely
Customizable to where you want to put it how big it will be what color will be but it's also very low
Costing plus, you can hide all of your equipment behind it from pumps to heaters
And that's why I call it an an eternal sup
Because you can literally hide all of your equipment inside it. Which is one of the big benefits to having a sup
Once everything is cured. You can go ahead and now install the filter foam now before we move forward though
There's a couple of things I'd like [to] know first is you'll notice that the height of my wedge is about an inch below
The rim of the tank the reason being is simple if all of these holes happen to clog which
Obviously, they probably never will but if they ever did water can still freely flow over this wedge
we still need the foam to come up to the top of the tank so fish can't actually get behind it the size of your
Foam actually needs to be slightly bigger than this wedge
Just so it fits in nice and snug now you have to decide on what you're going [to] run this
Whether it's going to be a water pump
Or it's going to be an air pump air pumps would definitely be the most
Economical and you could just build an airlift to move the water like I actually showed in the last video
Where we built a sponge filter like this?
I'm choosing to go the pump simply because you can get more power out of a pump an
[airlift] would be great for a lot of the smaller tanks but for you guys that want to do this on bigger
tanks definitely use a water pump or something like a
[powerhead] now when installing you have a couple [of] options [and] really it's going to come up to you
You either put your return through the wedge or you go over it totally up to you
I prefer to go through it for [a] more uniform
Look if you go through you just have to drill a hole wherever you want your return to go
Whether that's the bottom or the top?
You could even run a tee or a split in your return pump and have some of the output here and some at the bottom
to get total circulation
Or you could just simply run a hose over the top
How you do it's going to depend largely on the type of pump you have and they're all going to vary based on their connections
But for the most part it shouldn't be difficult to attach a hose to any type of pump as you can see going through it
Looks pretty good [if] I needed to divert the flow or more control [over] the direction of the flow I can just attach a small
elbow to this or in 45-degree elbow and
direct the flow wherever I want [I] also suggest having the outputs the same color as the wedge or we are here simply because they
Will look a lot better being the same color now before we fill this tank up, and I explain how this works
Let's talk about sizing these filters and flow rates first now like I said if you're using an air lift pump
Those are great for smaller tanks
And I mean up to 3 feet long
When you get into the bigger tanks that are 4 feet and 6 feet long you definitely want to go with the pump because you?
Can control the flow and get a lot more flow out of those pumps aim for about 4 to 6 times per hour?
circulation of your overall water volume, so if you had say a 50-gallon tank
You'd be looking for 2 to 300 gallons per hour for the pump
but when you get up to the 4 and 6 foot lengths you can't just have one of these you're going to need two [of]
these one in each corner
Which means you'll have two pumps and you can split back gallons per hour?
Between the two or you could even run them a little higher a lot of it
Going to depend on the density of your stalking as well as the fish are keeping some fish like a little bit more flow some
Don't but since we have so many holes drilled through this the gallons per hour is not really going to have a massive
impact on how efficient this will be as the water is going to be really evenly
Distributed over a large area [now] for the width of the foam you [can] go as wide as you want really
but use a minimum of about eight
inches of width [this] will ensure you can get a pump behind there as well as your heaters or anything else you want to [put]
Back there, and it allows you to have [a] sufficient amount of foam to perform its [job] both mechanically and biologically okay now
Let's fill this [up] and see it in action
And then I'll explain [how] this really works now that it's filled with water and the pump is running you can see that
It's obviously doing its job what I did was [actually] point the output slightly upward so I can get lots of surface
Agitation which will break up the surface and any proteins that collect on it as well as increase the surface area which will aid in
Oxygen exchange now the way this works is based on water
Displacement as water is pumped from behind the sponge it's forced to go to the front as the front rises it
Creates pressure against that sponge and all the holes and a head and the water has to flow back through to equalize itself
Let's basically have one of these work now as water is flowing through that sponge. It's both mechanically filtered which means it's
filtering out [all] the particles and visible Debris within the water as well as
Performing biological duties because beneficial Bacteria is now living within the sponge so not only the sponge perform mechanical duties
But it also performs
biological duties sponge filters like this in a sense are one of the most
Simplest man-made filters you could have now even though the pump is back here. We could still install
other things like a heater for example or
Other types of Media if you want to have some carbon back there
or whatever the case might be and obviously there's absolutely nothing else within the aquarium now to
Maintain something like this you would simply unplug your pump
disconnect the pump itself and the output
Pull the sponge out rinse it off in some tank water while you're doing a water
Change and simply put it back in and connect the pump once again, and then simply plug your pump back in
now since
Maintenance is so easy on this filter [you] might as well do [it] every time you do a water change however even that is not
Necessary typically you leave the rinse the sponge every couple of weeks depending on
How messy your fish are really the number one?
[tell-tale] sign that you have not done enough maintenance is the fact that the water levels are no longer equal in the back
meaning [that] the water level in the pump chamber is more than an inch lower than
What's in the tank itself at that point? You know too many holes are clogged and you've waited too long now
What about some pros and cons to this filter?
Well the number [one] thing is its simplicity it's very easy to run and take care of plus
It does a really good job
especially if you use a pump the second thing that I like about doing this method of
Corner [mat] and filter is the fact that when you remove the sponge to clean it
everything stays in place behind it as
Opposed to just using a sponge and then some braces along the side which is the original design you can get
Substrate or fish can get back there or equipment is exposed and so forth you
Can also keep some really [posterous] and aggressive fish with this. There's no way they're getting through this panel
It's also a really good type of filter for almost any aquarium for example
You could use this in quarantine tanks you could use it in hospital tanks. You could use it in grow out tanks
You can obviously use it in fry
Tanks because fry are going to get sucked through that sponge you can use it in breeding
tanks Due to the fact that a lot of the suction is diffused through so many holes and
Obviously any other type of query like that would benefit from having a sponge filter on it like this one
It's also really [cheap] to build
I'll be honest and tell you that I used a bucket that I've had for a Few years
It was old and banged up
I [decided] to cut it up for this one
But you can buy a bucket from Walmart for example for like 4 bucks
And you can build no less than three of these out of each bucket
[so] I guess if I were to have bought this bucket and built three of these each one would have cost me less than a
Dollar [50] the only other thing
To worry about is the sponge and the pump now you can buy a really cheap pump for like
15 20 bucks on Amazon ebay your local pet store online anywhere really
All you have to do is look around and then the sponge itself now that sponge I got on ebay for 15 bucks
[I] cut it down into three pieces so I could use it on three different filters
so really I'm only using about five dollars of sponge here so each one of these filters in total including [the] pump the bucket and
The sponge is costing me about about [tWenty-Five] dollars on average
Obviously costs are going to vary based on how you do it though, and that's the beauty of this filter
Is that there's so many?
Configurations that you can go with and then you can customize it to whatever you needed to do the only con that I personally don't
Like is that you actually have to drain your tank completely to get one of these installed
But with that said many of you are willing to do that and or are considering setting up a new tank
Personally if I were to set up a big fish room
This is exactly the filter that I would use
So if you made it this [far], do it yourself aquarium filters is obviously something of interest to you
It's something you really want to get into I will admit [that] filtration is one of my favorite if not the favorite
aspect of the Aquarium, Hobby
Besides the fish obviously I can say with certainty though that the chapter on filtration in my book the ultimate do-it-yourself
Handbook for the do-it-Yourself aquarius is absolutely my favorite chapter the reason being is simple
I really go in depth about filtration
including talking about the Bacteria
Itself and understanding it knowing what it needs and what you have to do to facilitate its growth, obviously
I [talk] about the types of filtration and the media for them and how much media is really needed giving mathematical equations
so you can literally calculate how much media you need based on the stocking and fish you're actually keeping sizing your filters and
Various flow rates based on the method of filtration as well as the type of filter
you're using is also gone in depth about and then obviously I show you how to build a bunch of different types of filters as
Well if you want to get a copy
You can go to the king of diy comm where it's [available] in ebook as well as softcover version your purchase goes directly to supporting
Content just like this anyways hopefully you guys enjoyed today's video
I also wanted thank you for watching and I'll see you guys next Sunday for a new do-it-yourself project