Filtering a 180 Reef-Ready

[Tony]

Hey all,

A few weeks back, I picked up a 180 gal reef-ready tank and stand *super* cheap off of Craigslist. It was sort of a mess and required me, my dad and a big friend to move the sucker over to my house. Man, that's a hefty tank...

Anyway, it is sitting in my back yard, waiting until after the wedding happens to be swapped for my 110g that my haps and mbuna live in now.

Currently, the 110G is filtered with 2x Rena XP3s and I have a Tunze on constantly to circulate water. I have a second Tunze that I plan on throwing in the 180 once it's setup. I was thinking of setting up the two XP3s directly to the overflows, but am thinking that there are problems with this idea.

• Overflow tanks like to have a constant water level. Canister filters cannot accomodate this. My saltwater tanks both have DIY auto-topoffs with 2 float switches that dump into the sumps.
• Filtration/turnover. They are rated at 350 GPH each. I am sure that this is when they are freshly cleaned also, and this rate drops pretty quickly after that. Is 700 GPH enough for a moderately stocked hap/mbuna tank?

So... what do we think about a sump? While I know how reef sumps should be setup (no bio-balls with a refugium and skimmer, etc), I have no idea what is important for a FW sump. I am assuming a trickle area for bioballs, activated carbon and coarse to fine filter pads (similar to a canister filter). I have an old 30 gallon tank would serve as the sump.

I have a used Iwaki MD70RLT (http://www.marinedepot.com/Iwaki_MD...er_Pumps-Iwaki-IK1123-FIWPEPOT-IK1173-vi.html) that I picked up a few years back when I was planning a big reef setup. It flows about 1500 GPH at 4' head. Is this extreme overkill? Think I may have a smaller MAG pump somewhere as well, maybe in the 1000 GPH range...

Any help is appreciate in advance.

 

[chris_todd]

Tony, I'll be watching the responses on this thread, and will be interested to hear what you eventually setup, as I am seriously considering getting a 180g to use as a freshwater planted Discus tank. But if I get a tank that big, I will definitely setup an automated or semi-automated water change system.

 

[danger_chicken]

Since it's drilled you might as well setup a w/d and get the benefits of surface skimming and bio-filtration. You could plug the holes but that's kind of a waste. Even with a sump I still use canisters for mechanical filtration. Personally I don't use carbon.

 

[Charlutz]

3x turnover per hour (180g x 3 = 540 gph) will most likely give you adequate biofiltration if you construct a good sized bio tower with 5g of bioballs or so. I don't find the need for separate mechanical filtration (canisters or hang ons) as long as the water circulates in the tank to keep mulm off the bottom and the filter pads go from coarse to fine as you are contemplating. Do a search in this forum to see my DIY wet dry setup. If you want better mechanical filtration or feel you need more circulation over the media, you can go up to 8-10x turnover, but it isn't necessary (provided you have a good sized bio chamber).

 

[Tony]

Thansk a ton for the responses guys!

-Chris - Will do. Probably gonna copy Charlie's plan pretty much exactly.

-Danger - Do you use a canister in addition to a tower?

-Charlie - Think I may have to copy your plan. Great job with the step-by-step DIY thread!

Couple of questions though... I saw that you mentioned the obsession with silencing the W/D. Any success? I built the sump for my 26 gallon reef out of a 10G tank and it's pretty quiet (except for the skimmer). Instead of bio-balls, I'm using a refugeum, so there's not really any trickling going on.

I was thinking that the bulk of the noise would probably come from the water dripping down onto the bio ball drawer.

Also, I looked it up and your MAG 18 probably flows around 1400 GPH with 4'-5' head. Those drawers are seeing a lot of flow! You never get trickling/splashing out of the drawers onto the lid of the sump?

As for the pump, all I could find in my house was an old MAG5 (250 GPH), so it's either that or the monster Iwaki unless I want to buy another pump. I'm thinking I may just throttle down the Iwaki some with a valve (divert some flow back into the sump).

How much flow is too much flow through a tower like this?

Again, you rock.

Tony

 

[Charlutz]

My overflows are rated at 600 gph max and I had them going full, then dialed it back to cut down the noise. I am probably at about 600-900 gph now. There is noise from the water going down the overflows, from where it splashes into the top of the tower and where it drips through the tower plates. You can quiet the overflows with durso or stockman pipe setups (google is your friend) and then by setting up the outlet into the top of the tower so that it is submerged. It's hard to explain, but I put a cup under the outlet and it works well. I also bought a new set of drawers and drilled smaller holes than I did originally. It's not silent, but it's much better.

No problems with splashing over the top of the tower. It's always better to have too much flow. You can always dial it back with a ball valve. Incidentally, there is no reason to divert the excess back into the sump. Just use an inline valve. There are a lot of internet posts that say they don't want to strain the pump and recommend diverting a line back to the sump, but this is not recommended by the manufacturer and likely causes more strain and uses more energy. Seems counterintuitive, but that's what my research found.

600 gph through each tower was ok. Could do more, but didn't need that much, especially because I have two of them.

 

[danger_chicken]

I added an FX5 because the w/d wasn't getting it done alone with 7 oscars and a few other fish in the mix. I was running a mag supreme 2400, the w/d is setup about 6ft from the tank and with all the elbows I figured I was getting 1000-1200gph turnover.

 

[gliebig]

How is the noise level on the trickle filter? I'm thinking of setting one up but not if it's real noisy.

 

[ezrk]

How is the noise level on the trickle filter? I'm thinking of setting one up but not if it's real noisy.

Holy necro! Anyway...we recently set-up two reef-ready 110s (4x2 footprint) tanks with bio-balls, etc. Here are the key things:

- We went with a Herbie set-up, not just a Durso. The Herbie set-up is much quieter and honestly we feel better with the bit of extra-redundancy on the drain.

- The generally noisiest thing we found are the pumps. We have Eheim 1262s which are generally thought to be fairly quiet, but we have them sitting on a pad of Poret foam and 5mm neoprene sandwiched around more Poret foam. That keeps them acceptably quiet.

- our stand are framed in solid wood, but are skinned in very thin kitchen cabinet material. We added some serious soundproofing (mass loaded vynil and sound absorbent foam) to the doors. This helps a lot.

Our wet dry filters have tow boxes. The first bos is Poret foam. The second box is bio balls on top of Poret foam. The foam helps absorb a lot of the dripping water sounds. The water mostly drips onto the foam then has a short drop onto the bio-balls which drops onto more foam into the sump itself. Sometimes there is a barely perceptible trickling noise you can hear if the doors are open.

If you can't tell, we like Poret foam, very useful versatile stuff...

 

[bschuhart]

Another possiblity is put a tank in the cabinet to use as a sump( raise it off the floor of the cabinet) and have your canister filters connected to the sump. silicone a divider in the sump and run your canisters on one side and poret foam as a bio filter on the other with the clean water from the canisters going trough the foam filter. You can also put your heaters in the sump. Use your Iwaki to pump the water back to the main tank.

I did something like this and it works.

 

[Hawkman2000]

If you use canisters as mechanical, won't that allow debris to build up on the biological media in the sump?

I would keep my eye on CL and grab the biggest sump system you can score. I see big ones pop up all the time.

 

[bschuhart]

you can also use a prefilter sock and skip the canisters altogether. You'll have to clean the socks often, but that's easy.

http://www.amazon.com/Sump-Filter-Sock-Micron-Felt/dp/B005V9ZRD0