Im moving sometime in late march, and wanted to have a tank setup and ready at the new house for some growouts. got a need/want to expand my tank space a bit and make the most out of the space im gonna have in the fishroom.

i made up a REALLY quick and rough draft. main idea was to minimize cost by keeping the glass tank somewhat smaller, and use some wood i have readily available for a good sized stand/sump.

all the piping was planned to run on the front of the tank to sandwich 3 setups like this along one 14 foot wall, but to do it one at a time since im not going to have the need for 3 of them for a long time yet.

all the sumps drain into some pvc piping running along the front of the sumps, down into a floordrain, then refill the sumps from the aging tanks using a mag drive. water would go back up the dump line in front of the sump after closing a valve to the drain. a 50-60% wc could be done just by dumping and refilling the sump. while its dumping, siphon all the crap from the glass tank and wipe it down.

i came across a thread where somebody had used bagged bioballs for their sump, to pull them out gently, dunk them in aged water to remove the course debris, then slid them back into their own compartment in the sump. i thought about making some kind of tray where the overflow empties into the sump, lined with a fine kind of filter media simply to catch chunks of crap or any flakes or worms that the overflow picked up. remove the tray, toss or rinse the media, then slide it back in. ideas?

the fishroom is also right next to the furnace room, which has two hot water tanks (size isnt set yet). making hot water tank heating of the growout tanks pretty appealing.

im heading down to calgary on the weekend and was gonna hit golds to pick up a little tank as a birthday present for my nephew, and while i was there, order the 48x24x24 to pick up next time im down that way.

anybody got any suggestions or ideas, especially about the tank size, feel free to let me know. this is just for general size and setup, all the details are for later. i need to order the tank this trip and slowly get started on the stand in my spare time.

Have at 'er

Josh