so i finally got the filters for the 180 gallon aquariums built and in today's video i'm going to
show you how i did it for only about 18 in materials each and i absolutely love these
filters before we get started to build them i used twin wall polycarbonate panels you guys know these
things i've been building lids out of them for years i decided i go with this for a couple of
reasons one it's incredibly affordable too if i need to bend something or whatever i want to do
you know i could bend it however i want you know use it for escape you know at the bottom to trap
in some different levels of substrate or maybe you want to build a weir of some sort and you're
really on a big budget or you could do what i did and that's simply you can take scissors and cut
these up to do whatever you need to do so with the first panel i simply cut it to the internal width
and height of the aquarium itself and then i took a couple of other pieces and decided that
was going to be the internal width of the actual filter and then for flow i only needed about
five half inch holes for water to pass through each chamber but i did 25 instead you never know
one of them could get clogged there could be more flow or less flow you get the idea i decided why
not just drill some extra holes in it not gonna hurt anything siliconed everything in place and
that was it it's an incredibly simple process now let me show you how all of this works and why i
built it the way it is and why i chose this method of filter versus another method of filtration that
i was talking about previously so this will be an example of an unfinished version of this filter
ignore the egg crate on the bottom this is going to be a lake tanganyika aquarium and i want to
put in some massive rocks uh and simulate a wild environment okay so first and foremost the front
panel goes in let's take this lid off the front panel goes in and i ended up cutting out a little
section here for water to flow over into the first section the reason being is simple and it's going
to look exactly like this water will overflow into the first section and be mechanically filtered i
also used a bit of egg crate to stop any fish from getting back there obviously using egg crate is
only going to start stop larger fish bigger than a half inch but if i decide to go any smaller with
any smaller fish in this tank which there won't be i would just add in some uh mesh over top of
that not a big deal so the way this is gonna work is water is gonna overflow over the top it's gonna
go through a massive chamber which holds about six gallons or five gallons of media the center one
is about eight gallons of media and then the final one is about six so total it's about 18 gallons
of uh section taken up now i know what you're thinking wow you just took up a massive part
of your aquarium and i want to point something very simple out this is the 365 gallons aquarium
filtration and this overflow weir is uh 5 inches wide and it houses all of the plumbing nobody
will say anything about that this is one inch wider it's only six inches wide no different
than having an overflow in your aquarium except the entire filtration is based in here i get
the volume of a sump yet no probability or no chances of leaks or anything like that
very incredibly simple to maintain while being absolutely effective here's how it works water
is going to overflow and go through whatever type of media that you want to uh polish the water with
whether it's going to be cotton batting maybe you add in some activated carbon a sponge something
like that i'm just polishing the water now and getting it clear because all the top tanks are
currently aquascaped and i don't want to ruin too much for you guys but what i also could have did
was mechanical filtration up here build a little platform for it to sit on and then a heater can
go in the bottom section and by platform i mean something like this i built this little platform
to hold the biological media it's going to hold all of that media above the entrance so that
water is forced to actually flow through it and it can't bypass it in any way if i ever want to add
in more biological media i can simply remove that platform but for optimal flow and for testing best
little platform made of egg crate is all i did and it's just kind of held together with zip ties
as it goes through this chamber it's going to flow up through all of your biological media
that's going to facilitate the nitrogen cycle gets to the top overflows into the final chamber which
again if you want to use this for mechanical and chemical and even more biological the
first chamber go for it second one biological or whatever you want to do i tend to use three
so overflow um biological followed by the return pump now the return pump is a large section
it doesn't need to be this big but in order for me to get the pump in it kind of had to be
as you can see the pump back there in this tank up here and the return at the top i love this for a
couple of reasons one it's not really taking away from the aquarium of course we're taking like six
inches off which shortens the length of the tank not that big of a deal because i was gonna do an
internal overflow anyways and it would have just been one inch shorter um however doing it this way
i'm able to maintain each aquarium individually meaning that this one can be fresh the one up top
can be brackish if i want or i can have different water parameters moving forward in each aquarium
because previously i was going to connect the two whatever's up top got to go down bottom
now in case fish want to get a little frisky and decide they can probably get back there again just
a little cover to go right on top they can't get in there now now that's it it's about 18 worth of
materials i could have built it however i wanted i could have made it smaller um of course this brace
is in the way here so it made it a little more difficult i probably would have made it only about
four inches wide five inches wide perhaps but in order to get the pump in and my hands in that's
something that i had to measure was to make sure i can actually do that with this glass in the way
it's like having a sump on your aquarium without having to drill your tank or make any types of
modifications if i ever change my mind and want it out i literally just got to pop this panel off
and i could rip this off out with my hand i'm not going to need razor blades or anything like that
but it also there's negative pressure here so what that means is even though this is like a flimsy
material and very lightweight the same amount of water on this side is going to be on this
side minus about an inch so something like this one so water levels right around here and we've
got about two inches where there is a pressure but it's just simply overflowing i also love the idea
that i can see absolutely everything functioning within the aquarium again i'm trying not to show
too many angles or show off too much stuff but i can see everything and how everything
is functioning and this is going to benefit us in the long run now we could have went with
any method of filtration with these guys i mean maybe i could have put canister filters beside
them built something else internally but i thought this was the way i could maximize the space a cost
effective way using a material that you guys can actually replicate because originally this is what
i was going to do anyways if you guys remember with the public aquarium that i attempted to
launch that some people still think is happening but i made a video uh explaining exactly what was
going on i'll link it below for those that haven't seen it but this is how i was going to filter it
anyways the tanks were going to come jutting out of the out of the walls but of course since that's
not happening anymore i brought everything here and we're setting these tanks up exactly as i want
doing everything that i really want to do that i think you guys are going to absolutely fall
in love with especially those top three tanks they're completed now those videos are gonna
start rolling out back to back we're going to be able to get the fish in here shortly
and it's going to be absolutely gorgeous out here i can't wait to be able to show you everything
uh moving forward so we got to get through those escaping videos and then i can like
kind of move around out here you guys can see now the racking systems did change slightly in design
i decided i was going to build them individually so i could still access the power and do a number
of other things plus they're all bolted to the wall these are not coming down they're all bolted
into the studs of the building if this stan wants to come down he's gonna have to take the wall
with it what if that did happen i'd hope i'd be standing in the center but the bottom line is this
originally i was going to do something that that i actually built originally i was going
to do something that i originally built uh back in 2009 so like 12 years ago and this is before i was
documenting every do-it-yourself project at that point on this channel i was just using youtube to
update on my fish silent videos maybe a little bit here and there just showcasing the projects
it was a little while later when i started doing back-to-back do-it-yourself projects every week
but there's so many things that i never showed you over the years and
like i said i've been keeping fish about 19 20 years something like that and some of my
favorite projects uh are from more than 10 years ago and it's simply because at that moment in time
a lot of things i was doing was relatively new and nobody was really trying so it was fun to be
innovative and change the way i was doing things based off of what i thought was going to work
now originally i had a pair of 120 gallon aquariums mind you this was 12 years ago
and remember how we started the gallery off with 120 gallon tanks i had experience with these guys
and i really love that dimension of tank so a lot of things that i do believe it or not have a back
story that probably goes back 10 years or so and maybe we should do a video where i'd showcase and
i'll show you guys everything i used to do but for example i had this stacked 120s now i only have
pictures of this because at that time i wasn't really taking videos of the projects more like
pictures and posting them on forums and whatnot but as you can see it's it's it's pretty modern
look for my level of carpentry skills which is no doesn't go much further than a table saw
but the two tanks are stacked yet staggered so the one in the front is pushed all the way to
the front of the stand like exactly how as i build these racks now and we have and we have like this
these jutting out a bit i pushed the tank all the way to the end which meant i had a bunch of space
behind that tank which i could build a filter behind it overflow through that and down into
the bottom tank and i just built this uh this trickle tower using old aquarium lids uh and
that the water would go through the top which was this mechanical filtration uh rain over all of the
biological media and then finally going into the bottom tank and the bottom tank had a simple pump
in it that would pump the water back up to the top aquarium which would continuously overflow
and continuously recycle eventually i think i added in some canister filters as well for
additional water polishing and or because i had them on hand and you know a lot of times if you
have extra equipment or an extra filter you might just toss it on the tank just because now that was
the original way i wanted to filter these tanks i thought it'd be really cool to introduce you
to that but it involved drilling the aquariums and building uh smaller tanks and stuff and i thought
even though many people wouldn't be able to do that because the idea of drilling an aquarium a
lot of times scares everyone i've shown you how to do it multiple times but once i decided on
the racks changing and how everything was going to be laid out i got to admit i got a little excited
because now i can finally build these continuous internal filters that are so easy to build that
will allow you to have just as much media and just as much control and just as much customization you
could build exactly what you want for like less than 20 bucks and a pair of scissors
anyways now that we're past the filter build process i can now go ahead and fill those filters
up with biological media that i already have cycled and ready to go with these fish so the
oscars are going in the first aquarium with the fajaka puffer as well as the bishop the first tank
is the oscars the second take is going to be the brackish water aquarium and i got to get moving
on that because i ordered more fish and all the fish that i wanted to try to maybe find i found
and we're going to be able to bring them in and then the final tank which is arguably my favorite
aquarium if you're not a member of the channel like members or channel member or something like
that they all seen all of these already so and that's something that i do on the members only
so if you're not a member perhaps consider joining because i show everything in advance whether it's
pictures or whatever it's going to be and then i want opinions and i soak them for everything
they're worth i want to know what you think so i can make adjustments before we put it to the
public but yeah the prana tank is arguably my favorite but it's the last one of these three
and then we'll get to work on the bottom ones i gotta move all the fish here i'm gonna be able to
move these fish here shortly and this week check out this all the wood in the apisto aquarium is
finally sunk and ready to go these guys are going to look amazing in there i will say that when
you initially add in manzanita you can see like it'll uh it's a little bit of fungus on this the
initial skin it's like rots um so it's harmless but it's ugly and it makes it look like really
bad it actually looks like beard algae but if we kind of get up closer it's just like a fungus or
something like that but yeah this tank is ready for all of those epistles we'll be
adding them in here shortly as well and i think this tank is going to be fantastic for not only
observing them but um i think that that this is a fantastic breeding environment for them as well
and if i had to guess i would say that they will be what the heck is that
it's a little clover it's like a lucky little thing maybe it's it's actually these this wood
was outside so if anybody knows what that plant is it's alive and this wood's been in here for weeks
man am i growing my backyard in here oh yeah members only also know what the i went fish
shopping lately and you guys will see that in a few weeks but they know exactly what fish i
just recently got to give you a hint they've been at the store for a year nobody's bought
them i think they were just too expensive or too specific but i had to get them so the oscars will
be going in the first aquarium the second one is the archers this tank is absolutely a mess
but it's just a holding tank right now i've got a ton of uh tank mates coming for these guys
uh and if you're familiar with like a classic brackish aquarium you probably guess what i'm
bringing in and then of course the piranha that are have to be in a blacked out tank because
they really are not doing well in this tank they're really skittish but once you get them
in the main aquarium which i'll be able to do this week they're going to do absolutely
fantastic but as you can see all that biological media and sponges and whatnot we're going to take
all that and put them in their filter that's where we're at with the gallery at this point
all the filters are built besides two of them i simply ran out of materials top three escaped
we'll be adding in the fish here shortly and i got a few other types of videos i know that you guys
really enjoyed that stingray barb video i got some other things that are very similar to that coming
up here shortly so if you're not subscribed to this channel yet make sure you do if you're not
already and if you can't wait and you have no patience like i do just become a channel member
i think it's like three bucks or something like that and uh you get to see everything in advance