New 300 gallon high tech planted Discus tank - Build Journal

[dbfzurowski]

I see a problem with your sump design. You have 95% of overflow water going to the bottom of your sump. I guarantee that all the debris will stay at the bottom. There will not be enough of water flow inside the sump to move it up. I would do the 95% at same location as 5% and straight into filter bags skipping the wasted space on the left. I would also look into moving bed bio media. Good luck

[rbarn]

That would be too noisy. This design will be ultra silent. You would be surprised by how much up flow there will be in the first chamber. It will have its own drain as well and be able to be flushed out easily, so if stuff does settle in there that is fine too.

Some plumbing pics
The "Y" split is the return from the pump. I wanted to make sure flow was even on both outlets.

[discusjoe27]

looks, nice, if i was a hamster I would get lost in all that plumming. of the 6 people, where you one of the people who carried it in? i had a 240 it took me,my brother, and at the time one of my brothers friends and his wife... if i ever get a bigt tank a again, i'm going to get more help.

[rbarn]

I supervised, lol. Local tank supplier that ordered the tank for me quoted "delivered" so she brought enough guys. I knew there was no way I would want to try it. They had 3 guys on each end and they were struggling. Spec sheet I ordered it from said 825 lbs. oooff

[nc0gnet0]

Curious on your UV selection, is this only to controll algea/green water? If not, your going to need a bigger unit to kill bacteria.

[rbarn]

Curious on your UV selection, is this only to controll algea/green water? If not, your going to need a bigger unit to kill bacteria.

Yes, mainly for green control, but I thought it would help control pathogens too. It wont ? I'm trying to set-up the baddest of the bad system here. I can still return it for a bigger one. Lim makes some insanely monsterous sized UV lights. What do you recommend for pathogen control ? Besides water changes.........

[nc0gnet0]

Your problem is most pond uv units that accept higher gph flow are designed primarly with only green water control in mind. To accomplish a higher rated flow rate they do this by having a wider distance fron the quartz sleeve to the uv chamber external wall. This is why UV's made for aquariums tend to be narrower, allowing for more thorough penetration of the uv light throughout the water column.

The things you need to consider if killing pathogens is your target is turnover (gph), penetration, and contact time. For pathogen control the minimum turnover rate is 4x per hour that I would recomend. As for contact time and penetration, this is to be determined in part by the strength of your UV bulb (watts). In tanks that size, what you usually see is several UV units ran in parellel to reach the objective.

Without getting into the debate on whether or not UV systems are worth while, I can say that a single 40 watt uv on your system will do nothing more than control green water in my experience. I do not have the chart handy at the moment, but when I worked out the math, for my 50 gallon small juvie growout tank, I came up with a 36 watt UV at 200 gph for pathogen control.

Rick

[rbarn]

How do you go about calculating proper exposure time ? UV light was intended just for green water control, but now you have me thinking of upping the plan.

[pennex1]

Hey rbarn, Are you on the Corral and or the turbo forum? 11 Mustang? Just saw your sig. We have another hobby in common besides discus.

[rbarn]

The one and only ....... Cant wait till this project is done and moved into the new house so I can have time to throw the Whipple on the Stang

[Chad Hughes]

Looks pretty cool!

I'd skip the UV. IMHO they are worthless in an aquarium.

The site doesn't have a performance curve for the pump model you are wanting to use. You're going to have at least 10' of head from that I can see. I'd also ditch the second pump unless you want a backup. Some large setups actually employ two pumps that alternate. One runs for 24 hours, shuts off, then the other runs for 24 hours. I only use one pump per system. The largest system is 750 gallons and turns 40 GPM. It keeps the water super clean!

looking forward to your updates!

[rbarn]

Yep, the 2 pumps are ridiculous overkill. I really wanted to run 2 separate flow systems them though. 1 pump will be strictly for tank/sump circulation and probably bypass through the UV system and chiller to control flow rate. The 2nd pump will be a closed loop system off the sump that does nothing but flow thru 20 micron cartridge filters and then through bio-media. I know its a waste, but I really wanted the tank circulation pump to be doing that and only that.

You think head height will end being that bad ? 10' ? Top of the tank is only 5' 8" - I was figuring maybe a 7-8' head max. with all the friction loss.


Order (2) of the following micron cartridge filters day. Going to run them in parallel, and then run it to a series of Nu-Clear canisters with bio-media in them, then back to the sump.
http://aquaticeco.com/subcategories/...-Filters-Large

[Chad Hughes]

Yes, you'll have 10'+ head between the tank height and the plumbing friction/bends.

The cartridge filters are not going to work with your pump choice either. You'll go from 40 GPM to 40 GPH. You'll need a high head/pressure pump to power any filter other than a sump.

You may want to contact aquaticeco and ask what pumps they recommend for this particular filter.

[rbarn]

hmmm, thanks. will do some more research.

Looks like I'm gonna need a 3/4 to 1hp high pressure pump to put out 15-20psi and get decent flow through the canisters.

Thanks for the catch.

[Chad Hughes]

No problem,

For what it's worth, a good sump design with micron sock filtration is really all you need. I use 36" micron socks in my 150 gallon sumps. I lay the socks in the sump sideways and plumb the overflow directly in to the sock. 100 or 200 micron socks is plenty of fine filtration. You can use multiples if you like. I use one per sump. In the larger setup I can stock about 300 discus and I feed beefheart. Once the feeding frezy begins it literally destroys the tanks with debris. My sump completely clears the water in an hour with 4 times per hours cycling.