New sump I built for the saltwater aquarium. Let me explain why?
Before I show you guys how I built that sup just a quick announcement. Okay, so I actually have two things
I want to mention one from June 23rd to the 24th reef of Blues in New York is back in town
I'm gonna leave a link in the description below and get all the information as well as your tickets the kicker
I'm speaking at it this year, so I cannot wait to meet many of you there. See you soon the next thing
I want to talk about
You guys know I'm Canadian. I live in Canada
Many of my fellow Canadians and even those south of the border wish there was some Canadian events and I'm excited to tell you
That from August 11th and 12th brief Expo is hitting Toronto
This is Canada's biggest most popular freshwater and reef hobbyist
Convention and once again. I'm speaking at that one. I cannot wait this will be my first one in Canada
I'm gonna leave links in the description for that as well
So you guys get all the details as well as your tickets cannot wait to see you guys okay?
So I actually built this up a few weeks ago
But I didn't really
Film it in the typical way that I would I didn't even actually think I would be let me just show you what I captured
Know if you're not following me on Instagram. I actually went live
To kind of talk about this and we put it together however
I thought I hit the record button on this camera, but I didn't so if you're not following me on Instagram
And you don't want to miss these types of things make sure that you do link is in the description anyways you guys will remember
these little
Baffles that I'm using right now. They might look familiar. I've used them countless times on aquariums as Liz these are green panel
roofing housing
indestructible cheap
see-through I
Use them for a lot of my aquariums, but since these baffles aren't going to be under any real pressure
I decided I'm just going to go ahead and use them as
Baffles here, I know that they look like they're taking up a lot of space
But there's only a couple inches there the way this works is
Another thing about this sump. This is about a twenty gallon and
the media baskets from the original sumps fit perfectly
In here just like this so that turned out fantastic so I can literally transfer all of the media from this aquarium and their baskets
to the new some
So water will enter in through the top through a bunch of stacked baskets
It will then pass through what I will most likely use some more biological media finally
I have an area for the skimmer now
That's the whole reason for building this in the first place was the skimmer the original sump
Which looks just like this kind of works the same way whereas water will come through here
Go through all of the biological media. It has to rise up over here, which is sort of like a baffle. They technically are baffles
But the last compartment
I have
houses the pump and skimmer
together now the skimmer is going to create a bunch of micro bubbles and the pumps is going to send those micro bubbles up to
The main aquarium, so I need those separated, so skimmer here, and what these baffle walls are going to do is
One of these walls is eight inches, that's where the water level is going to be and it's siliconed at the bottom
I just silicone to all of these in place
Water has to travel up over this it can't go any further so it has to come down
around and like this
Bubble three on this side because bubbles cannot go down bubbles obviously rise to the top, so this is a bubble wall
So as water flows down through it all the bubbles that the micro bubbles are going to get trapped here
They're gonna burst at the surface and not be able to go through underneath to the return pump
now of course in the racking systems
I don't have a tremendous amount of space because I'm gonna have two different types of aquariums on two different methods of
Filtration with only the space to run one type of filter for example all the rest of these
Aquariums are both run on the same filter taking up the entire
bottom space of the aquariums
but I only have half the space the other ones do to construct some sort of a filter so I
Come up with this, and I think this is gonna do fine until we upgrade now to switch this out
I'm going to do a big water change on this aquarium draining this sump and
That will be an easy switch. I'll pull this one out transfer everything into the new
Some and install that fill the tank back up
We're good to go to do my water changes on the saltwater system for now. I fill up this big Rubbermaid barrel with about
30 gallons 40 gallons of water and
Then I mix my salt into it the salt is here. I have a little container and I figured out that
twelve of these
Gives me the salinity I need in here
Which I've shown you guys before how I check it with the refractometer so water changes are pretty simple once. I'm ready
I drain some of the water from the main aquarium
And then I just pump this in with a pump and a long hose and fill it back up
It's to the temperature. I need it to be and the salinity matches the main aquarium
Again, this is just temporary I'm starting off by draining the sump
I just have a small pump in there pumping this down the drain
And then I'll be able to pull this right out so the old sump is now removed and we have everything set up in
The new sump you guys remember how everything is set up. We have these filled
With the first two or bio-balls
I went to bioballs because these are in a merged section meaning the water level is going to be below here so above it
I wanted to have media design for that all these
Containers below it though are filled with meet marine pure bio balls, but look just like this
This is one of their eight inch blocks
I think it is eight or ten inch blocks eight inch, so it's eight inches by eight inches by four inches
So this here is biological filtration then we have a bunch of chemical filtration. We've got some chemi pure and
Activated carbon as well as pure gin down here
so
Cramped quarters, but everything is fitting in just fine then of course
We have the skimmer and then the return pump, and you guys remember we're using the Ecotech vector m1
Or a turn pump, and that's actually the same pump we use for all of the returns on these systems
It'll fit we're doing it front to back just because it's a space saver
I'm gonna have to cut this a little bit make some minor adjustments here and there I
Could still easily access everything so that's a bonus and make adjustments to the skimmer plus be able to actually see it
Clearly I've gotta do a better job with my cable tidying up but
This pump
Now we do a water change so the stumps now up and running and it has been for a few weeks
Let's take a closer look at ok so it's gonna be kind of difficult to see in here
Just simply because it's dark, and I'm just gonna use this little light
But as you can see in the back here
The water comes down this hose goes through the media baskets like I showed you previously and then of course has to
Go through the marine pure and all the chemical media the skimmers over on that side as well
And then the water simply returned now the only reason I made this sump like I said was to have a bubble wall
Let me show you how it works
So as you can see that skimmers producing a massive amount of bubbles and a lot of them escape the skimmer
And if I didn't have this bubble wall here
They would escape into the pump section and simply be returned to the aquarium
But the bubble wall as you can see water has to overflow over the top
It has to go down
All the way at the bottom
And the bubbles aren't travelling with it or at least for the most part some will escape to the side as you can see but
It's not enough to cause an issue in the main aquarium, but that's essentially it like 20 bucks
We got a 20 gallon aquarium. Took us about five minutes, or less to actually build this and
You know toss it underneath the stand and it's taking up
75% less space than the previous up tip however I am using I am losing water volume by about
10 gallons 20 gallons, but that's fine technically this is just a temporary setup
We will be moving the fish to 180 gallon system with a much larger filter
I just wanted to take this opportunity to show you guys
A really basic way that you can put together a sump for a saltwater system
The saltwater hobby doesn't have to be that complicated, and I know that a lot of freshwater hobby want to transition over to saltwater
But always so worried about where to start and how complicated it might be inexpensive and etc and I totally agree with
You as well. However once you are in the saltwater hobby
You realize how much of your knowledge from freshwater truly transfers over to saltwater
I mean there's still the nitrogen cycle and the same type of rules apply
So I don't know
I hope that these saltwater videos that I'm making you especially you know just having some cool fish and whatnot just simply gets you more
interested and
Potentially inspired to start up your own little saltwater aquarium and enjoy that world with me as well anyways
Hope you guys enjoyed today's video and for those in New York. I'll see you soon and for those in Toronto
I will see you guys soon as well if you are in Canada though
You've got plenty of time to book tickets flights buses trains start walking whatever you want to do it without you guys these things
Simply cannot continue, if nobody shows up
They're not gonna keep putting on shows, and then I'm not gonna get to meet you guys, so if you don't show what's your fault?