1000+

[ourmanflint]

Hi

You'll need to add an anti-siphon hole to your outflow drain to stop it from draining too much. Just a small hole a few mm below the water level on the outflow pipe will do it. Then if pumps ever stop the water will stop draining when it gets to the air hole and breaks the siphon. You should be able to estimate how much space you will need to leave in sump to cover what does drain before anti siphon kicks in.

 

[Yo-han]

Will receive the frame today and the tank within 2 weeks. Only thing I'm not excited about is the fact it needs to be where my 400L tank is standing now. Looks like I need to move that one and that feels like an awful lot of work for only a few weeks...

 

[Yo-han]

I finally found some nice pieces of spiderwood. Was a 500km drive to Germany, but worth it! (and a nice opportunity to test whether my old car is still able to drive fast (no speeding limit in Germany )).

I also got my sump finished and filled with water. It's now pumping water from the end to the beginning, just to cycle it a little and test whether everything works the way I planned (it does!!

)

 

[Edvet]

Impressive!

 

[dougstar]

Can you post more pics of your sump

 

[Yo-han]

Can you post more pics of your sump

What do you want to see? I got a video, perhaps I can upload that here...

 

[dougstar]

Sounds great! I have a large sump on my tank and spent months looking for the right design, and have had beautiful water. Would like to see how yours compares to mine. If you are keen ill post a few pics of mine

 

[Yo-han]

I finally put all the pipework together but I made some serious design flaws and had some leak problems.
For one, I couldn't stop 1 bulkhead from dripping, so I used silicon in between the glass and rubber. Fortunately, this worked! Next was the main drain pipe. It leaked on two points. It was the last pipe I glued and I was running out of glue so I hoped it was enough, turned out: NO! Bought some new glue, some new piping and corners, sawed away the old piping, glued in new and it was waterproof! So now only one problem I need to fix; I build a purigen reactor. Works great except for when the pump stops, then water flows in reverse, and all the purigen is sucked into the sump. Putting the pump back on blows all the stuff into the display tank (not hypothetically, it happened ). So I need to install an one way valve, I ordered it already but I need to fix this later on. Not a big deal because I got two pumps and the CO2 is on the other line.

When everything ran the way I wanted, it was time to empty the tank and start scaping! So here are the pictures (sorry for the reflection, it was a very bright day):

The tank with the 400L as a comparison:

With the frame above:

Lights are hanging:

Dropped in some stones:

Some wood:

Some sand and 100L soil:

Started preparing plants:

And planting:

5 minutes later:

And another 5 minutes later:

A little cloudy right after filling, but not bad:

The day after (almost clear water):

10 days later:

 

[luckyjim]

Looking very promising

 

[oviparous]

Beautiful!
You outflow seem to have grown a lot in 10 days.

 

[Edvet]

 

[Yo-han]

Beautiful!
You outflow seem to have grown a lot in 10 days.

Haha, must be the Brighty K! But if it keeps growing in this speed, I need to find another solution

No, the reason is that with the 32mm outflow I couldn't increase flow anymore or the Utricularia left the substrate. So I bought 32 to 50mm elbows to reduce the velocity and now I can increase flow again. They will be spray painted black, but I received different elbows than the picture showed. I expected these:

But received:

Purpose-wise it is the same, but in my case aesthetics are obviously more important. They couldn't get the one from the picture anymore, so I found www.northernpolytunnels.co.uk which has the one from the first picture as well. I hope it's without the ring, but this time I email first!

Once I've the right ones I'll paint them black ant they're almost invisible (I hope).

 

[Edvet]

Wildkamp? thats where i buy PVC

 

[Yo-han]

Checked it, but not what I'm looking for

 

[Yo-han]

Utricularia is doing great in one place, 10 cm tot the left dying completely, 10cm more to the left doing great. Not sure whether the bad patches came from one cup or what, but I've had troubles getting UG started before, once it grows it does great!

Diatoms have kicked in big time, but ammonia is already a few days 0, and nitrite is almost, so I hope to add otocinclus and shrimp in this weekend!

 

[Yo-han]

Came home after my holiday and my tank looked quite good. I reduced the amount of light and some plants suffered from too little light it seems. Algaewise the stones got covered in a short form of BBA but the wood and plants look quite good so here is the latest picture:

 

[NC10]

Looking good mate

 

[Edvet]

Dont you get dead spots under the overflow?

 

[Yo-han]

Thanks NC10!

I've been playing with the flow quite a lot Ed, and right now one outflow is aimed straight at the left glad and one straight at the front. This way 90% of the water goes down on the left, flows along the substrate and goes up on the right. I tested with liquid filter medium and it is certainly no deadspot, although flow is not very high in the back below the outflow.

 

[flygja]

That looks nice. How much of CO2 do you have to pump since you have a sump?