Darkskies

Hi R Budds, I’ve been gathering all the materials for my own 5.5 gallon project. Just waiting on the undergravel filter to arrive (Lee’s was the only one I found online for a 5.5 gallon tank and it might take a week to arrive from a 3rd party seller on Amazon). The LFS near me don’t stock UGFs at all, let alone one for a 5.5 gallon tank, because they’re so “old-school”. How did you make your own UGF? Very neat by the way. If I have a check valve on the air pump in between the airline tubing, I should be able to adjust the flow from the UGF rather well even if I have the uplift tube cut down to 3 or 4”, right? Also how did you go about cleaning the Safe T Sorb? I heard it’s very messy in the water. Thanks a bunch. Will definitely keep you updated once those plates arrive and I can set up my tank!

Hi R Budds, Thank you so much for taking the time to post such a detailed and informative response with great photos of your tank! I’ve been following Dr. Novak’s videos on YouTube but my understanding was that he would make the uplift tube for the plenums to be either flush with the top layer of the substrate or 1” above it. He had said on one of his videos that having a long lift tube makes more of an “updraft” of the water so it ends up not working out somehow. Obviously this has not been the case for you and your strategy seems to have been more successful than some other people’s who had the short uplift tubes that are just above the substrate. What made you think of this strategy instead of following Dr. Novak? I’ve been reading posts on anoxic filtration here on these forums and it seems most of the other people’s projects didn’t work out? Dr. Novak had said that you can put groundcover mesh over the UGF plates and then be able to put sand substrate on top without having to worry about the sand settling into the UGF and with the groundcover mesh the water will still flow through the UGF. Are you saying that Safe T Sorb alone without any iron fertilization (laterite/seachem flourish red) should still work to create anoxic filtration (and possibly work even faster)? Seachem Denitrate is a biomedia similar to Seachem Matrix but with even more structure conducive to denitrifying bacteria to grow on. It doesn’t have any chemicals or products in it and just provides a home for more denitrifying bacteria to colonize. I was wondering if it might promote anoxic filtration even more by being placed under the plenum. I wish I could have step by step instructions on how to make this so that it’s basically guaranteed to work but I keep running into conflicting information. Dr. Novak is also very longwinded and tangential in his videos (even in his instructional ones). Really appreciate your help with this! Thanks!

Hello, Great tank! I was hoping to start a similar project. When you say the vinyl uplift tube “goes from over the 75mm down to under the 25mm it then goes to the surface, to monitor the flow” by surface do you mean the uplift tube goes just above the top layer of substrate or that it goes all the way to the top of the tank/water level? Also in Dr. Novak’s videos the uplift tube would have an airstone in it set at a low rate to drive the filtration, right? Do you have that here as well? Would it be possible to set up a 5.5 gallon tank with the UGF plenum + seachem denitrate under the plenum while having 1/4 inch of seachem fluorite red on top of the plenum followed by a 3 inch regular sand substrate covering it? Is the Safe T Sorb absolutely necessary? Thanks in advance!