Yesterday we added the peacock bass to the 1200 gallon pond
Everybody is doing fine in their filter. Everything's back up and running
It's actually later on in the evening and I want to build some filters
I don't know why but when I get the urge, it doesn't matter what time of the day it is or
I'll just come out and start building stuff for working on things
So I do have you guys will remember when to the store I picked these up
Today I went and got these we're gonna build some sumps to replace the current filtration on the 120 gallon racking system
I got to make something abundantly clear before we begin I have
Absolutely, nothing against these seamless sumps from custom aquariums. These subs have been absolutely phenomenal
I do like them for a number of reasons one
Completely and totally indestructible
they're made of the same thing that like milk cartons are so no algae or
You know anything can grow on them, which is nice like mold or anything like that. And for a
Manufactured some that you would buy they're relatively
Affordable in comparison to a lot of other things but that said there's more than one way to skin a cat
I
absolutely hate that saying I don't know what who come up with it or
Or why people are skinning cats or need multiple ways to do it. But let's say there's more than one way to filter a tank
When it comes to
Getting a sump or an aquarium force up. You've got a number of options one
You could build it in my opinion
When it comes to building small aquariums as far cheaper to buy them than it is to build them believe it or not
You really only save money when it gets into the big tanks and for me personally that doesn't happen until I get into
200 gallons or bigger getting them secondhand. For example this forty gallon tank. Probably run
You maybe 40 50 bucks or even weight for like a dollar a gallon sale?
I know some companies do that get it for 40 bucks
So any costs on itself can be pretty minimal
Oh, if you're not familiar with what a sump is, let me just do a basic rundown first and foremost
You're clearly going to need to drill your aquarium now
I've shown you guys how to drill glass aquariums acrylic aquariums plywood attack wherever you name it
This is going to create an access hole whether we do it in the back of the tank or through the bottom
This is going to allow to overflow out of the aquarium. A lot of people don't understand overflow
So to put it into something you will understand just take a look at your bathtub
Say you put the plug in your bathtub and you're filling it up completely and while filling it up instead of the water
You know completely spilling out at the tub. You have these tiny little things here. It's like and it's like a safeguard
It's an overflow that allows water to flow out of a hole in the back here so that it doesn't fill up
That's basically how an overflow works when you shut the water off the water stops overflowing out of it
Turn the water back on water will start overflowing out that little hole again
Exactly how a sump works now, there's a ton of different types of overflows that you can install whether you've got Weir's etc
I've gone over this so many countless times that I
Sometimes forget that not everybody has washed every single one of my videos and if you haven't what's wrong with you
so essentially the way it'll work is we have a sump underneath the sump is just like slang for a
Container that holds water sump is a description of the container. It's not really the filtration system per se
It's just a container the filtration system would be within it and there's so many different ways. You can configure these today's video
I'm going to show you probably one of the easiest so an aquarium like this if we look up over here
Beyond the anubius there. We have an overflow
Pipe it's actually in one of the h2o overflows by custom aquariums
I know I'm gonna sound biased here, but that's one of my favorite if not my favorite
Overflow system most all time due to its simplicity ease of use and you know, it's just very efficient
Although if you don't like them, I've shown you how to build a bunch of them
So essentially we have this overflow. We have the sump in the sump
We have a pump the pump. The sump is filled with water and there's a pump in it
The pump is constantly pushing water up to the aquarium. It's returning here. All that water has to go somewhere
Otherwise, we'll flood the tank. Just like your bathtub
So it overflows out here drains back to the sump where it's running through various types of media
all that media is your actual filtration system will have
Mechanical filtration which filters out all the particles in the water then of course
biological filtration which takes care of all of your
ammonia, oh
and
of course now the benefits of a having a sump is you guys seen we have an extra volume of water this adds to the
Dilution of the main aquarium the more water there is the less likely there will be fluctuations
Aids in died Lucien and then of course
You have a massive amount of control over how your filtration acts how much media can truly hold?
I mean you can truly add a
massive got a 40 gallon tank here 40 gallons of media versus a what a hang on the back filter on one of these or
I don't know a canister filter, please. This is gonna be able to hold a massive more a massive amount of media
we could put chemical media in it, whatever we truly want and we can make it do and
And filter the water. However, we like anybody remember these types of things. Those have been around for a while
When do you need a sump? Well, you can size it some to whatever size aquarium you want
However, in my opinion you start using sumps
Maybe around the hundred gallon range 50 gallon range depending saltwater systems. They like to use some have much smaller sized aquariums, but
Freshwater aquariums once it gets above a hundred gallons. I
Like to start putting some online
You can use whatever you like, but that's just personal preference
What size dump do you need well?
Let me give you an idea the sump needs two to two functions one
It needs to hold them at the media amount of media
You're actually going to require
plus when your pump actually shuts off a
Bunch of extra water from your aquarium is going to drain down to it now
You can kind of calculate how much water that's going to be and I like to use this I go by the one inch rule
I
Never have an inch of water drain down to myself when the pump goes off
But it's usually half of that. So but I like to have you up to half of that or quarter
So I give myself a safety factor or two or four and to figure how much water is in an inch of your aquarium
Just take so for example, I have 120 gallons. It's 24 inches tall
120 gallons divided by 24 and that comes out to five that means five gallons of water will drain down to my sump now
One inch isn't going to drain down but it also accounts for how much water's in the the tubing the pipes whatever there might be
one inch or dividing your aquarium by
the gallons by how tall it is is always a good safety factor for me using that one inch for
So I need a SUP for a 120 gallon
for example
I need a sump that holds an extra five gallons minimum now depending on the type of sum that I'm building. I
Need to account for that
So for example if I'm running a rope a wet/dry filter or a trickle tower filter
Which means most of the media is going to be suspended in the air?
That method of filtration you can use the smallest size stumps because for the most part they run with very little water in them anyways
I've got a massive playlist of about 50 or so do-it-yourself filters
you can build it and explains all of this in them and we'll leave that playlist in the description below for those that want to
learn more
anyways
You get the idea depending on the type of sum that you're actually going to be building you need to account for that extra water
That's going to be draining into it
But in my opinion use the biggest sump you could possibly fit under your aquarium just for that adesh additional water volume and dilution
Anything there's pros and cons to it when it comes to a SUP
I've already listed a lot of the pros, but the cons well
They take up a lot of space of course and they could be one of the most expensive types of filtration
Not only do we need the tank or a Rubbermaid bin or whatever method
You want to use a volume just a container that can hold water?
and other things like the media and whatnot which comes with the
Which is of course what you need to add into your filtration system, but you also need to buy the pump
Really though it kind of evens out to a really the same price as like a really nice canister filter
But just the part that we're building today
Um, this cost 20 bucks will say this cost $40 if I got it for a dollar gallon or secondhand
I didn't I got it pray. It knew didn't I don't have time to build a bunch of these aquariums right now
They're gonna cost me more to build them by anyways
But you get the idea we're looking at like 60 bucks type of deal
I already have all the media
But if you didn't and you're running a submerged sump like I'm going to be doing which means all the media is going to be
Submerged go to your hardware store go to the barbecue area and pick up a bag of lab or bra highly porous media
Fantastic, I got videos on that as well and very cheap. You know, what 20 pounds my ten bucks
Why am I replacing these stumps again? Nothing wrong with them?
but like I said more than one way to skin a cat and I don't want
Everything out in the gallery to always you be using the same things
I'd like to maybe switch it up every six months so that I can show you how we can run all of these aquariums using
Various methods as opposed to there's only one way to do it. I want to be able to build things
I want to be able to buy things. I want to be able to give you guys as much information
and and knowledge as we possibly can and if I just do everything one way and leave it you're not really benefiting from that so
What I like about these drawer systems is they hold it fantastic view amount of media, right? What's this gonna hold? What?
five gallons, but they also
Part don't they so you don't have to use them all you few, etc, etc. Now
This one single drawer system that cost twenty dollars is actually gonna build the components for two socks
So I'm using three of the drawer systems one is gonna be by or
Mechanical filtration will have a bunch of polyester filling in here. I also need to drill holes through it
With a little drill I'm using a step drill bit because this drills through pet plastic one of the easiest ways and the cleanest
I'm gonna do half inch holes, and I don't really need it to be pretty
Now for those that have seen me doing this before
Probably wondering why did you make the hole so big the water is just gonna pour it
It's not going to pour evenly over the media. Don't worry about it. We'll talk about that in a second
That would be for a wet/dry filter where I want the water to reign over the media evenly in the media
I keep saying media. It's the biological
Filter media and that media will typically be elevated in a wet/dry filter and you need water to pour over
Evenly, I don't need that to happen. The reason I did it like this is because thank you see it's actually level
well
It's actually below level we'll be able to put lids on this so we don't have much
evaporation with that set the top level we put in some
polyester filling below that all the biological media and below that we
Obviously see a void space and we might think it's a waste of space
It's not the reason being is because the water levels gonna be right up to here
Maybe a little higher maybe a little lower
but if this container wasn't folding this section up
That means that this bucket here would drop below water level and that means that once water is pouring and down through this
Container into the next it has the option to actually just float out of the bucket
I want this peak portion to be above water level at all times
so that it is forced to flow down through the media which means we're gonna need more holes under here so it can continue to
flow through
And we're done
Now if this container was above the rim of the tank I'd want to drill in holes near the sides as well
some relatively large holes, so that means if the
Polyester filling or the cotton batting or whatever we're gonna call it ends up clogging and the water level rises
It's not pouring out of the tank
It'll just come pouring out of those protection holes or those safety holes, but this is below the level of the aquarium
So I'm not gonna bother drilling this container if water overflows it just overflows
So with the drill 2 minutes of my time, it's done
I also bought these tanks because eventually I want to use them for something else
but for the time being we're gonna use them as sounds show you different methods of
Filtering these tanks and just different ideas for sumps but we won't use them forever
We'll eventually switch back to what we were using maybe in six months or something like that
I just want to make sure show you that these types of things do work. So now I have to repeat that process
four more times basically build four more of those
It's not really building as drilling some holes super simple and easy then shut the aquariums down remove the stumps
Take out all the media transfer it to those containers, which also have those large
Ceramic clocks in them like this one right up here. You see that remember these have been using those provide a bit?
Anyways, those each one of these containers has a large block like that. I'll put it right here
so I've got a bunch of those ceramic bulbs that'll fill this the
Block, I'll put it here
So the water has to flow through that as well and then pump right here
and of course if I was running heaters
I could put my heater in my sump as well less equipment and clutter in the tank another pro to having a sump
He was gonna finish the night off by drilling the rest of these containers getting them ready to go tomorrow
we're gonna rip out all of these stumps, hopefully and
Get the tanks switched over to these subsystems
See if they work see how everything goes if you want to see them in action and see them up and running
Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any of these videos for those that want to see it
Alright now unfortunately, it's too late in the evening
It's gonna take hours in order to I need to dedicate a whole day to switching over the filtration
So make sure you join me tomorrow
And we'll get all of these switched over it's big job though