MCJ

I built the spray bar out of 1/2” pvc plumbed with 5/8” hose. I think it’s around 18” with 3/16” holes every 1”. I probably should have cleaned the glass for better pictures of the engravings in the sump. I know sharks don’t exactly fit a FW tank theme but he loves them. I still need to get the wiring cleaned up and organized. Can’t wait to start filling this thing with plants and fish.

Finally got things up and running and wanted to share. I appreciate the help Iv received on here so far and looking at your tanks. For equipment settled on: 40g Top fin tank (all I could find local but looks like a decent tank). Painted the back glass black. Substrate is Brightwell Rio Escuro F with a “river” of Carib sea sunset gold. 20g sump I made glass baffles for. It houses 2 4” 200 micron filter socks, Eheim 150watt heater, 576cuin of 30PPI Poret foam, Innovative Marine 538gph variable flow DC pump. Not sure what I’m going with the center section yet. I didn’t want to risk drilling this tank so I built 2 King of DIY overflows. It didn’t take long to get them dialed in perfect and quiet. One overflow is throttled with a valve and takes most the water while the other one takes a small amount of water but valve is wide open incase something happens with the main. They stop and restart siphon without issue. Some water flow noise but soft and pleasant. I have a Toms aqualifter pump I initially primed the overflows with and not found a need to continuously run it. Lighting is currently a Kessil 360 tuna blue which goes down to a 10k spectrum. I have a second one but the power supply is glitchy and needs to be replaced. He loves this light because he can easily tune it to blue but I am thinking about AI prime freshwaters for it. I have talked to a few people and see posts of the tuna blue growing plants really well in FW so I’m not in a big rush to buy something else at the moment. This tank is my 8 year old sons so he gets the final say on a lot of things. I still need to build a hood for it. It will be open on the top but hide the light and keep the fish in.

Thanks madmark. Iv got a couple small tweaks I’ll end up changing but it will be close to that. I realized I’m only pumping about a max of 500 gph through it and that’s really not much for this thing. Should have it up and running this weekend. Iv got 25 gallons of water “cycling” with some air stones for flow. Used 10 gallons of water out of the established tank and shook the filter off in it. Washed out the bags of sand really good and left them open in the bottom of the container. The sand came with bacteria packets so added some of that too and a real small amount of fish food for organic waste. I think this will all work out and can still throw the filter media and some more water from the other tank while things get going.

Thanks Madmark. Do you get a lot of water moving noise from your sump? I redesigned a couple things. I think I am going to step down and use the 4" filter socks its going to give me more room Ill probably appreciate in the future. (I didnt bother adding the second filter sock in the drawings). I also created a baffle to keep the water height constant at the filter socks and sponges. Also made a slope/waterfall where it spills into the middle chamber which now has enough room to be used as a refugium if I decide to set that up at some point. The bubble trap may not be necessary but I thought it wouldn't hurt to keep it either. I could add an adjustable height baffle on the first part of it so I can raise and lower the water level in the refugium section if I ever wanted to adjust it. I also attached a slightly modified design (file sump4) that does have the adjustable height baffle and a wider bubble trap chamber so I can stick a piece of sponge in to help quite water flow over the baffle. Not sure I like this design as much but its really similar and should function. Since I'll probably use the 4" filter socks I might do 2) 3/4" over flows in each of the back corners of the tank to feed each of the socks. Or just do a T on the 1" overflow I initially planned (and already bought parts for). The redundancy of 2 make more sense though.

Attached is an idea I had. This sump is actually a 20 gallon not 29. 24x12x16. The horizontal part that looks like a piece of glass is the estimated water level not a baffle. The water will flow in from 1" PVC with a ball valve to throttle the flow and in turn make things quiet. My heater will lay on the bottom under the filter sock. Water will then flow into the 4" of 30ppi sponges which are retained by some strips that won't obstruct water flow. The middle chamber is small and probably fairly useless but could have filter media bags like purigen,carbon,K1. 4" of sponge may be over kill but I dont think you can have too much biofiltration, technically I could just add more sponge. Anyway on to the bubble trap, its a 1" tunnel for the water to flow though. I may bump this up to 1.5" to slow the flow and further help eliminate bubbles although I dont even know if micro bubbles are a big issue on FW like they are SW but I want to build one anyway since it keeps this sump versatile. The outer short baffles are 6" tall and the center one is tall so I can adjust the water level and dont have to worry about the water fall effect in the return pump area. If the overflow does not drain I have about 5 gallons of water that can get pumped into the tank and the shown water level. This is about 1.75" of water in the main tank, which I will probably run the level a little higher then that so potentially could over flow a couple gallons. Easiest solution is run the sump water level a little lower till the system proves itself. When the pump is shut off I should have have about 3" of water fill the sump and it will have twice that amount of room in the sump at the shown water level. I am happy to hear any feedback good or bad. I am no expert but this makes sense to me anyway. I do have some wasted space around the 7" sock and could do a T on the drain and run 2 4" but I think the filter area is a little larger on a single 7. Not sure if the couple inches I could gain in the center section is worth it but that would give me about 7.5" which seems like more room for a refugium. Question - The sponge media will be partially out of water and even with an ATO will still have some variation in water height. Is this an issue? Say sump is at shown level with good bacteria colony in the sponge, water drops 1" and now some of that bacteria is in the air, dries out and dies, sump fills back up and that die off is introduced to the tank water.

Thanks for the info. The frog bit looks like a cool plant and the water lettuce is easily sourced in about any water way here in S. FL. I did watch that video and was blown away by the amount of filtration media but he has a huge tank above it. I bet your fish were really confused when you fired that router up haha. Y'all have had me thinking and I am going to cut out the baffles and redesign this sump over the coarse of next week. This sump was never perfect, just functional. I have enough projects going on but I dont want to get things set up and then want to change things later on. The first chamber is larger then it needs to be for a single 7" sock. Time will tell but I think this will be an easy once a week swap. I probably won't start with a refugium but want to make it an easy "add on". It would be cool to grow some shrimp/fry, plant propagation. The middle chamber will be a little larger. For the bubble trap on the right side I may increase the baffles width so I can stick the 2"wide 30ppi sponge in each section. I will raise the center baffle here for a little higher water level and might be able to keep the return section pretty small. Once things are up and running Ill probably end up adding an ATO so there won't be extra work for a pet sitter if we go on vacation for a week. Also thinking of a set up where the first chamber is divided in half lengthwise so the water out of the stock flows onto a stack of sponge, down and out into the middle chamber. We will see the wheels are turning. I am doing to try and calculate the amount of water in the return section so even if the over flow is clogged, losses prime( it shouldn't) or whatever the pump will run dry and shut off before main tank over flows.

check on YouTube for king of diy 10$ DIY aquarium overflow. (not $10 anymore though) It solves the main problem with these type of lift overflows loosing prime by using a small vacuum pump to keep air out. I can't attest to it 100% yet anyway, I am setting up a tank with it in the next couple weeks and will post the build and provide some feedback on this design.

No worries that is a good idea. Even if I don’t use it there are lots of views on this thread and people in the future may find it useful. Great idea on using pvc sheet to build stuff. Very diy friendly. Fluidized K1 is probably the best biofiltration from what I have read but incase I do add co2 in the future I don’t think the two would work well together. I did read some people that run sumps with co2 will seal the sump and this helps prevent co2 loss. The 30ppi Poret sponge/foam is supposed to be a great biofiltration media as well and it will be quiet. I could fill the middle chamber completely with it and might. The filter sock will mechanically remove a lot of waste particles and the bacteria’s that will grow in the sponge should help polish the water crystal clear as well as break down the ammonia and nitrates and whatever else those helpful little creatures do. For anyone else interested you only want to clean the sponges when flow is restricted and just swish in some water and not thoroughly clean it because it removes too much good bacteria. Some people running tons of biofiltration in a sump can actually crash the tank if they cleaned all the biofiltration media. This was all a weird concept to me at first comming from SW, if we used it all the bio filtration media would store and release phosphates and probably nitrates and could crash the tank. Basically opposite for FW. In this sump when SW I ran a single 7” 200 micron filter sock with cheato algae growing wild in the middle chamber. At one point I had a cheap Florescent plant growing lamp that worked fine but switched to some led strips that were given to me. Sump light cycle was opposite tank light cycle. It’s been a while but I think this purpose was to keep fluctuation in oxygen levels to a minimum. From what I have read on the internet that’s not needed even for a FW refugium.

Thanks. I agree it won’t give the look I want and greens may not pop like with other lights geared toward FW. However the tuna blue goes down to 10k. Aquarium co op has a lighting video saying plants will grow from from something like 2.5k-10k but the looks will vary. There’s also some other reports online of people growing plants with the tuna blue. Anyway I am only using these for a limited time while the tank is in the early stages since I already have them and really have not decided on what to get. 6.5k color appeals to me the most but I also want to be able to fully adjust the spectrum. On paper the AI prime fresh looks better than the tuna sun. Chihiros looks like they have some nice lights but the shimmer from the pendant lighting is very appealing to me. Gives that natural sun look. The Weeks aqua light recommended earlier looks good on paper but found some negative reviews on quality so will probably pass on that for now. I am going to try and find some shops somewhat local where hopefully I can look at any one those models. Something with something with programmable sunrise/set and moon light would be nice but not required. An 8 year old will think it’s cool, even appealing to me. Anyway I am open to suggestions on other models. I’m See attached. It’s nothing fancy, it’s actually the first sump I ever made from the first tank I ever had. Pulled it out and washed it yesterday. I am debating on redoing the baffles but at the same time it’s worked fine on a 55 and a 75 so it can serve its purpose as is. Waiting for heater and pump to come for final decision. 1” Pvc drain will feed the 7” filter sock that will be on the left, sock will hang from the pipe. Water will flow to the middle chamber which will have 2 2” 30ppi foam going all the way across. Aside from fluidized k1 which I don’t want the foam seems to be a great surface for bacteria. Doubt I would need more but would have the room for it. Then water flows through the bubble trap and gets pumped out. Decided no refugium, really not needed like with SW and all a light down there is going to do is grow algae and make more cleaning work. I don’t have an auto top off anymore so if I redo the baffles I’m going to make the pump section larger or just buy another ATO.

A cichlid would be really cool they are pretty. Pretty sure I’m going to end up with MTS again haha. At my worst I had 4 reef tanks. Sold off a lot of stuff years ago when I moved and condensed it down to 1 75gallon. Unfortunately I got super busy at the time with a new baby and growing my business plus working full time for a company. I lost my sensitive corals from lack of maintenance and one morning a surge protector caught on fire melted some wires and burned my wall. Atleast I was home when it happened. I had drip loops on the cords but it could have been salt creep or just a faulty chip in the power strip. Either way that was the last straw and the tank came down. I was able to give my fish and coral away to other tank friends. It sucked but happy to be getting back into the hobby. I don’t really count the 20g fish tank we have now, need to make that once nicer. Hope they’re allowed here haha but attached are a couple pictures I found on this phone of one of my old fish tanks. All my good pics must be on an older phone I need to try and recover. I had that blue tang for over 5 years and gave it away in the end.

Its a pain since we buy water for us and the dogs haha the fish will get the special treatment too. A new well and house water system is roughly 10k plus the cost of maintaining the filtration media twice a year. Not something I can easily afford but might end up doing one day. I have a really similar filtration set up like the link I used for my salt tank. Since my house water sucks it required a good amount of filter changes to keep TDS near 0 anyway which I think this tank will be more forgiving. From what I have read anyway with good filtration and a balanced ecosystem along with testing and dosing large (~50%) and frequent water changes shouldn't be needed unless you have to fix something that went wrong. I know this is a completely different tank set up but with that approach I had my reef tank full of fish and coral and only needed to do a 20% water changed every 2 weeks once I got it figured out. Doing similar should make this tank pretty easy to take care of and like you said above the easier you set up maintenance and cleaning the more likely you are able to stick with it and keep everything happy.

Thanks for the tips. We live in essentially the middle of no where and have well water, crappy well water at that. Its very hard and not close to clear. Without extensive filtration I dont think it is useable. We have a water machine in town (20min away) we already buy from that sells 5gal/$1 that is filtered to 3 or 5 micron, deionized, carbon filtered and uv sterilized. I planned on using this water for everything. Need the test kits to come in so I can figure out how it will be for the tank. I also have a RO/DI system I could set up again and remineralize the water but its not that cheap long term to keep up with the filter/media changes. Trash can, heater and a pump are good ideas. I have some old smaller pumps I could use. Good idea on cycling some water in buckets before the tank even gets set up. Iv seen a few fish tanks flood houses, never a good sight. At least we have all tile and I'v got enough experience running and sump I shouldn't have any issues as long as the tanks hold together haha.

Thanks for all the advise and inspirational photos. I think I have a better plan together now. I should have started with the amount of maintaince I want to deal with. Tanks that need 50% water changes weekly are a little much for me. I am good with doing a 20% water change weekly or preferably bi weekly as things get stabilized. Hopefully once I get going just test, dose and change water as needed. My son is going to care more about the fish than plants so I am going to start with some easier plants and go without the co2 for now. To me a salt reef tank seems easier then some of these FW set ups but I just need to get one set up and figure out the rest as I go. Iv been watching a lot of the co op videos and trying to soak it all in. I picked up the tank yesterday still have a couple weeks till his bday and it gets set up. Pet smart had a top fin 40 breeder half off for $60 so that worked out well. It seems to be well made and its 1/4" glass. Going to get the back glass painted black this week. The substrate was on sale too so I got 60lbs of Caribs super naturals. My wife picked out the sunset gold color, I kind of wanted the jungle river but this will still look really good. Since I can see this tank getting rearranged here and there I am getting some mesh bags with 1mm holes to hold the aqua soil and bury them under the sand in planted areas. I need to order the soil still and its either going UNS contrasoil or Brightwell. I used a lot of Brightwell stuff on my old tank and found it to be high quality. The innovative marine pump is on the way and went with an Eheim heater Iv used in the past. My sump is ready to go aside from some of the plumbing parts. Im going to use a 7" filter sock and not sure what's going to be in the middle chamber yet. May not be needed but will probably do refugium just because they are cool and well more plants. Still more research to do on this. Starting with the Kessil Tuna Blue 360s which goes down to a 10k spectrum that will grow plants I just dont know if things will look they way we want. Really undecided on what I will end up going with. I know without co2 the lights will be ran with the intensity turned down. Kessil and AI will have good shimmer which I love but the Chihiros WRGB and Vivd look like they produce some awesome colors. Either way I want to be able to control the spectrum and preferably have a sun rise/set timer. I will figure it out in time. Seeing in person would be best. Most of the shops around here are mainly for salt water or really basic fresh. I think I found a place that looks promising about an hour away to check out once we get it set up. We have a 20gallon basic fish tank set up so I am going to take the filter media out of that and wash it in the new tank to help with getting a cycle going. Other then that thanks again for the help and I should have some tank pictures to post in a couple weeks.

Cool I’ll check it out serpadesign. My wife has a lot of customers that put her plants in big walls like that in their homes but I have not seen tanks incorporated in like that. Best of both worlds. What is the purpose of the egg crate?

I found a cool 40 breeder another member on here set up. What is the egg crate material on the bottom used for a do I need to use something like that?