# Wet Dry Sump & DIY 5gal bucket Canister FIlter for 220G Tank



## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

Hi

I'm in the process of turning a 55gal tank into a DIY Wet/Dry sump. I located a local glass shop who will cut and polish 1/4" plate glass for my baffles, this wet dry sump is for my 220gal tank that will house African Cichlids, most likely all males.

What is the proper media order - from the beginning where the overflow water enters 55 gal wet dry sump, to the point where it is sucked back up by the pump?

I have seen some drawings and order can be different based on whether filter floss (polishing) is first or porous sponge (larger particle trap) to then flow over bio balls, then overflow to refrugium (heater/fish hospital/plants) to bubble eliminator to then the pump which ejects the water back into the tank.

I know its also important to know the height for each baffle based on the design.

My old wet dry was a off the shelf. Water started from the top, went through the fiber floss, the through the bio balls and then under to the next area where the fish hospital and heater were. Lastly, overflowed into a return pump chamber. I was looking to understand what the best order set up options are for the above.

Thanks! Joe


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

Would it be to much filtration to have both a 55 gal Wet Dry Sump paired with a DIY 5gal bucket Canister Filter on a 220 Gal all male Cichlid tank? Would it be the best of biological and mechanical filtration or just repetitive and unnecessary? When I look at the DIY plans for the 5gal bucket canister filter its filled with lava rock and filter floss. In the Wet Dry, it too would have the filter floss, bio balls (or pot scrubbies) but also have the large porous sponge? Maybe even a chamber for carbon? Please let me know your thoughts on the above. Totally planning this and want to make life easier where possible.


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## Kanorin (Apr 8, 2008)

Merged these threads because they are related


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## nodima (Oct 3, 2002)

IMO - one of the benefits of a DIY sump is the ability to add ridiculous amounts of media. Assuming you have a reasonable pump, your life will be a lot simpler with just a sump. Many others here use Poret foam in their sumps as opposed to floss. It has been fantastic for my tanks. There are two media chambers in my sump - the water first flows through 2" Poret (20 ppi), then through bio balls. The heater is located in the center chamber where the pump is.


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

in my sump it's like this:
filter socks (ignore the foam pads on top, lol, that was temporary)
drip tray with floss in it
eheim substrat pro
biohome ultimate
purigen reactor in 3rd chamber plumbed off return pump manifold (the thing with the american flag on it)









Originally I didnt have the media in bags and it looked like this: http://www.xero.cc/fish/biomedia.jpg I was able to fit a layer of bioballs on top as well when i didn't have the bags. However, once I bagged the media it ate up more space because it doesn't compact quite as well in there. However, I don't regret the bags. I had a major media spillout once and I said never again. it was mostly due to that left sidewall between the sock and the media chamber, it's adjustable up/down to set the level, and it was only being held in place by water pressure. I added that eggcrate on the side to prevent it from happening again, but i still bagged up the media anyway because I'm not taking any chances.


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

I wasn't certain if I was going to use filter socks at all. I thought that was only used in Salt water sump.

Question - what size do I need to create for initial media layer where water first enters into sump? Like where your filter socks are in picture above?

Is it a 12x12 piece of light diffuser stacked every so many inches? = one for floss media, next bio balls then ceramic rings? I'm confused about this as I've seen so many variations for this and how there are several media options to choose from. Apparently it seems you can start by going down, then across based on the baffling layout?

Since I'm building the sump from a 55g tank, I'd like to get feedback on best practices for layering media - mesh bags look like a great idea for keeping ceramic rings together, ease of cleaning off ect.

I wanted to have a space for refugium (plants, heater, fish hospital ect) and a bubble remover (3 pieces of glass 2 inches apart up down up pattern? Then decent space for the pump to eject water back to the tank.

Hope I didn't loose anyone with my description. Please let me know if there are guidelines for spacing etc.


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

naw, in fact some people argue you don't want socks for saltwater because they will catch/kill little living critters like copepods and stuff, lol, but that's debatable, you can ask 10 diff people and get 10 diff answers when it comes to anything fish keeping, especially saltwater reefkeeping, lol...i use them in all my tanks with sumps, salt or fresh. but socks are honestly one of the best mechanical filtration you can use, you can think of them in place of filter floss or foam.....the other thing is, you can get socks made in tons of different sizes, like down to 50micron even, my 120G has 3x 14" long 100 micron socks, which is already finer than the 200 micron socks that came standard. needless to say, with socks you can almost nitpick exactly how fine your mechanical filtration actually is...and the longer ones will take longer to clog before you need to clean them.

A wet dry filter is almost like an upside down canister filter, most of the time. So that means generally: buncha mech filtration first, then biomedia. Like in an FX6, it runs through all the foam first, then up through the bottom into the media chambers. Or an eheim, where it comes up the bottom, goes through some ehfimech and a foam pad, then into the biomedia. Then often, people put a floss pad at the very end, but it's somewhat debatable that you could do all mech at once, then all biomedia, so just mech, finer mech, finest mech(floss), biomedia as opposed to putting any floss after the biomedia....but this is all getting into the realm of diminishing returns. the only reason i can see to put any mech or floss after the biomedia is to catch any fine dust that might be slowly emitted by the biomedia over time as it grinds itself away to dust....it's not that big of a deal most of the time though if you thoroughly rinse your media. do whatever suits your needs best in that regard, but generally you want some sort of mech filtration before biomedia cause you don't want your biomedia getting clogged up with sediment.

Take a look at an eshopps wet/dry and it's basically just the middle section of my sump without socks, and using a buncha cheap bioballs instead of more expensive ceramic biomedia, however it still has mech filtration before the biomedia, there's a huge floss pad above the drip tray, which is pretty much the same setup as the middle section of my sump minus the sock chamber. A sock will just provide more mech filtration before hitting that foam pad, extending the life of it hopefully. and they are probably more effective as well.

Here's a video of my sump in action btw...maybe this will sort of show how it works a bit better. 





I think the part you're missing is the drip tray.

The egg crate (or, light diffuser) is not usually stacked every so many inches...usually just one bit of it at the bottom,a bunch of media, and then a drip tray on top. The drip tray is basically just a tray with a bunch of holes in the bottom and a space for filter floss or foam on top. I just have bags of media stacked on eachother on top of a a doubled-up layer of eggcrate. I doubled it up because the weight of this media was bending a single layer pretty good, and this made me feel better. The sump has little plastic tabs that are part of it that holes the eggcrate off the bottom so that the water flows under the media and to the next chamber. You could put it in-between media layers if you wanted but it'd probably not sit flat since as soon as you put the media into the bags they kind of get lumpy...I wouldn't bother, the bags are good enough I think.

You can also check out Adam's sump (thecichlidshow on youtube, adampowers on the forums) he used a piece of eggcrate and created little piers to hold the eggcrate off the bottom using little pieces of PVC and some zip ties. so no tabs on the sump needed, it became a self-contained piece of eggcrate+piers.

The only reason there's egg-crate on the side of my sump is a workaround to the mediocre design of this pre-made sump. The black panel behind that is adjustable up/down, and there's another thing that holds that in place, but only from one side. The top of the adjustable panel is the water output of the sock panel, and basically creates a big waterfall. This means you basically can adjust the water output level of the sock chamber, but for a wet/dry that's totally unnecessary as it's always going to be on top of the drip tray. It's also only held in place by water pressure in terms of pushing it in the other direction, which maybe doesn't matter with bioballs, but kind of does when you're stacking heavy ceramic against it, as soon as I drained the sump enough while doing a cleaning, biomedia pushed the wall down and spilled everywhere. It was a nightmare. I had to actually vacuum it out and capture it in order to clean it all out. Needless to say, bag the media for sure. Haha.

My sump is actually something like 12x14 i think in that media chamber. Maybe bigger, I'd have to measure, but i know the one dimension is 14", it's not a perfect square. I don't think the size matters too much, i mean, big as you can go is always the rule with sumps, i think, lol.

i wouldn't overfocus on a bubble remover for a cichlid tank too much unless you are also doing a planted tank. bubble removers are more typically to catch bubbles from skimmers in saltwater tanks, and in planted tanks you really want to almost prevent the bubbles rather than stop them, as it means you need to add more co2 most of the time...You can certainly do that kind of thing in your sump if you want, it won't hurt. You can probably just get away with 2 pieces of glass though instead of 3, is what i'm saying. Think about how you want to set the water level as well. You generally want the water level to be going down further and further in each chamber, but on a wet dry, you generally want the water going into the wet dry pretty high up so that you can fit the most amount of media. The lower the water level is going into the wet dry, the less media it can hold for your given sump size. So you want the water to start high going into the wet/dry and get lower as it gets towards the return chamber.

I think the ultimate sump (for saltwater with refugium, or even freshwater if you wanted a fuge and it sounds like you do) is a 4 chamber sump. That's what i have on my salt tank downstairs, it's a fancy sump but it goes like this:

First chamber: socks
Second chamber: skimmer chamber (but in your case, you'd do wet/dry chamber)
Third chamber, refugium, 
Forth chamber: return chamber

The water level will get gradually lower as it goes through each chamber. The return chamber is the only chamber where the water level will vary, and this will be the chamber that lets you know when it's time to add water to your tank....that also means you dont want it too small or you'll be chasing water a lot. Then you'll want an auto-topoff system, lol.


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

Hey LXXero,

Great the video - your pretty harsh on yourself! lol - But I get it - my last sump was so loud, I never thought twice about trying to dampen it or add length to the pipe and submerse it to quite it down. Great idea! I'd like to know more about your command board too. You have a lot of gear mounted on that wall. 
I'm using a 55g tank that is 20" high x 12" wide and 48 long. I'm bummed because the height of my show tank cabinet's internal ceiling is about 9" from the top of the sump tank, which could pose problems with plumbing, cleaning or changing media out. But I'm moving forward with it.

Really appreciate the details on the 4 chamber set up and advice to skip over the bubble reducer portion.

Once I decide on these filter socks, I will then measure & order the glass for the sock & wall baffles. I'm going with 1/4" plate glass. I'm trying to decide on these Tear-Resistant Polyester Felt Filter Bags from McMaster Carr - Wayy cheaper than Amazon (2 - 4x14 for $13.) the 4x 14 unit price when you byuy 10 or more is $4.37 ea.! Monster Fish Forum peeps think they are great and half the cost! Getting these in first will certainly help me with the right measurements. I'd do four - two x two in the first chamber. In your 1st chamber, is the sock plate fastened to the wall baffle?

Sorry for the novel!


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

Yeah, I basically setup this tank as if it's a saltwater reef tank, but then the sump has a wet/dry conversion kit in it. That was not entirely unintentional, not that I have any plans to make it a reef tank any time soon, i'm quite happy with my mbunas, but, it's something you can only really do before a tank is setup, you can't drill & plumb a tank later very easily...has to be done before hand. Now that it's setup this way, I have way more options available to me in the future.

I have a neptune apex controller on this tank as well as my 60 cube reef tank downstairs. It's really more intended for saltwater tanks, and it's not cheap, but basically, I get a PH probe, an ORP probe, a salinity probe (not very useful for cichlids, lol), as well, I have a custom breakout box (that little blue box) which let me add optical floats and magnetic floats to detect the water level in my sump. I also added the "ALD" module which is basically a flood sensor and will detect spilled water. I also recently installed a buzzer that will actually beep loudly if any of these "alarm" conditions triggers. I also have lights under the stand that turn on when you open the stand door (lol, like your refridgerator) it's pretty ridiculous actually. this tank is a lesson in how to go completely overkill, hahaha.

this shows the magnetic door switch as well as a fairly recent view of the power board, though prior to adding the buzzer which is the latest addition




this was my original video showing the power board off, this is before I added the flood sensors and the stand lights though





Yeah, I didn't have much room to work with height-wise under the tank either. You really want to keep your drains as vertical as possible, but such conditions make that a challenge, I had no choice but to go horizontal for a short distance under the tank with that little height to work. When I accidentally spilled my media everywhere, cleaning it out was a royal nightmare because I was literally bruising my arm trying to reach over the sump to the bottom to pick up media. I ended up making a custom vacuum tool out of some PVC bits to help clean up all the mess, it was crazy, i'll never put media in there without bags again, lol.

Hah, seems like you did some research on socks, i wish i'd known about those, I ended up buying those ones off amazon, lol.

Yeah, 4 chamber sumps are great. Generally you'd want to reduce bubbles before they get to the return chamber, so i mean, a 3 piece wall might be OK before there. Some sumps do funny stuff like have a foam pad at the bottom of one of the chambers that can be removed/replaced and that also kinda acts like a bubble reducer. However, most of my sumps are only 1 or 2 piece walls and they are just fine. The extra third piece is really only handy in a few specific situations, and makes it a lot more difficult to cut it out or modify later if you end up with badly set water levels. A 2 piece one is a lot easier to cut out and raise it up if you screw it up badly...haha, not that you should aim to screw up, but, i've seen it happen all too often someone builds a sump only to realize the water levels are all wrong after it's all glued up.

This is the sump on my 120G btw...you can see what i mean with the foam pad on the one wall. If you see, that foam pad has a clear acrylic removable piece in front of it with some thumbscrews holding it on. You remove that if you're using it as a wet/dry. If you use this sump for saltwater, you typically put the refugium in the middle, and you'd leave that acrylic piece in place, which sets the water level a lot higher in that middle chamber. You can also see what i mean in regards to the "inputs" prior to the sock chamber being too small, see how the PVC drain pipes just drain into those 2 smallish clear acrylic tubes which then overflow into the socks? Those clear acrylic tubes are just too small to handle high flowrates. If they'd just built a big square box that both drainpipes fit into, it would have been a much better design, imho.
http://www.aqueonproducts.com/assets/01 ... _400wh.jpg

Yeah, the sock plate is glued to the sump. You can't remove it. Also, you don't have to use 4" ringed socks, they also make huge 7" socks, and they come in 16" long so you can do 2x 7x16" socks, or 4x14" socks in a fairly similar a moutn of space...etc...if i had a choice, i'd have made the overflowing portion of the sock chamber bigger so that it wouldn't matter, but short of that, i'd have done 2x7" because of the way my drains are. I don't really LIKE having to add a "Tee" to my drain at the end for the socks, it's not optimal. If I had a big enough overflow chamber, or bigger socks, either of those would be a better solution than what I've got, but this solution is working very well so I can't complain.

This tank also has a full siphon drain system...you can see it in more detail here:
http://www.xero.cc/fish/120_returns.jpg


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

Yo LXXero,

I'd like to use the flex pool hose that you have. I was in HD tonight checking their inventory of flex PVC hose and wondered what diameter hose your using and where you acquired it. My overflow box uses 2" schedule 40 90's and I can use schedule 40 to bring me into the stand, but having the flex hose would make connecting / disconnecting a breeze, especially with the limited head room I have inside the cabinet. Can you share the transition pieces you used to connect from the schedule 40 pvc to the pool hose? Since pool hose uses inside diameter to measure (rely on barb type connectors) I wondered if there is an option or if its special order.

I have to work with 3/4" on returns and 2" for draining to sump

Thanks, Joe


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## CeeJay (Aug 16, 2016)

I don't know were your at by now but here the pro and cons for filter socks.

Pros
1. there easy to replace.
2. you can tell when they need to replaced
3. they filter all the water no bypass un till there dirty 
4. they can be cleaned an reused many times
5. they will catch fry that get past your screens

Cons
1. *Cost*
2. They get dirty pretty fast 
3. they have to be cleaned
4. they wear out 
5. they catch fry you don't want.

I have two wet/dry running one just has a pad on the drip trey the other has the filter socks. I could go either way I don't think ones better then the other. So if it was me I would go with what's the easiest to build. For me what's about as important is a prefilter before the socks to get rid of the larger partials.


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

are you talking about the black spaflex on my 120g or the pool style hose on my 60cube that i used for the emergency? could you show me which you're referring?

the black spaflex was provided by my LFS but it's way better than the white spaflex you get at home depot...it doesn't use barbs though, you glue spaflex directly to pvc, there's no fittings.


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

CeeJay - Thanks on the Filter Socks, I see the pros side of the Filter Sock, and the cons too. I do like the re-usability though. My last (and only) sump just used filter floss, bio balls and ceramic rings. I learned a lot from my mistakes - over feeding and getting dirty stinky balls as a result - lol. I'm in the middle of acquiring my stuff now. I have a shower to finish and my wife is not pleased that I am starting another project before her shower gets finished...


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

LXXero,

Yes the black spa flex hose in your 120g. HD had a few different sizes, just not 2" that I could tell. I also noticed that the flex spa hose measures inside diameter vs outside.

I watched some YouTube videos on that stuff today. I'm going to go rigid pvc from the overflow box and returns but use spa flex once I'm in the cabinet.

Did you support the spa flex hose with brackets to reduce sag?

Also learned HD doesn't cary gate values, only ball valves. 
On my old tank, I have 3/4" & 2" ball valves and couldn't close either, like they were vapor locked. If there is any secret tips I should know on those gate valves, do tell. I'm likely just going to order those on line. It doesn't appear you would need both anyway.


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

Hmm weird. I thought spaflex was measured the same way, might just be home depot being stupid. Their spaflex kinda sucks, I had trouble getting it to glue up leak free. The black stuff really fits in there rigidly. I'd look online. I think there's a site called flexpvc or something like that which sells it in every which size you can imagine.

Naw you don't need to support the spaflex much. It's not very...flex. It's pretty difficult to work with in fact, cause it's really not that flexible over short distances. It's better for doing like a big curve. In my case I used it for my open channel drain and my returns since both were single runs with a curve up the tank. What I did end up supporting with a bracket is the hard-pvc with the gate valve, since adjusting the valve is gonna put tension on the pipe, it makes sense to add some support if you can, although my 60 cube i didn't support the valve and it's fine so i don't know, it's probably not a huge deal either way.

Don't buy your valves at home depot. they suck. they literally all suck. you want spears sch80 gate valves. and i wouldn't buy any ball valves unless they're also either spears or cepex. There's a popular reef supply store that sells exactly the valves you will need, but i'm not sure I can post a link here, send me a PM if you want the link.


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## CeeJay (Aug 16, 2016)

I got to ask LXXero what problems have you had with a there vales?
There's just not that much to go wrong with a ball vale. I have been using gate vales I find the ball vales are just good for on or off with the little control. I have been buying vales from the big box stores and never had a problem. Some of them I have had for years and have reused them over and over. I can't believe you wore them out. Did they leak?


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

CeeJay said:


> I got to ask LXXero what problems have you had with a there vales?
> There's just not that much to go wrong with a ball vale. I have been using gate vales I find the ball vales are just good for on or off with the little control. I have been buying vales from the big box stores and never had a problem. Some of them I have had for years and have reused them over and over. I can't believe you wore them out. Did they leak?


they're just **** that's all. they stick and don't turn very easily. I didn't wear them out - i never used them on my tank to begin with. Those valves only got used on my DIY python stuff just cause they were so crappy, there's no way they were getting glued onto my tank.

if you try a cheap home depot valve and then try a cepex or spears valve you will see what i'm saying.

my spears gate valve and my cepex ball valves are both rebuildable too. even if they did leak you could repair them in place.


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

Hey LXXero, 
I've been traveling a lot these past two weeks, I just received my 2" & 3/4" spears gate valves. I too could never turn my ball valves from HD. It was like they were vapor locked. And then when I dismantled that tank, with zero pressure, they turned fairly easy. So, to your point, they do suck and are a bother more than an easy option.

I have all my plumbing now, just need to get the glass baffles cut. I need to revisit that whole portion as I forgot exactly what I needed to do.

I'll keep you posted. Joe


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

Cool, take some pics! I've been busy building my 60 cube reef tank and my new manifold came out absolutely beautifully, maybe some inspiration for you:

http://www.xero.cc/fish/60/manifold_front.jpg


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

Hey LXXero,

Pic looks cool. Dumb question, but to be fair, I googled it first. What does a water manifold allow you to do? I found an explanation of returning water from a single pump to the DT with multiple "heads" but it just looked like branched off pvc returns for water displacement across the tank? Removing the need for multiple power heads?

Separately, I'm hoping to get over to the glass cutting shop to have my baffles made. 
If you could shoot me a PM later this morning or early afternoon, I'd appreciate it.


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## LXXero (May 4, 2016)

Basically lets you direct water to numerous things, multiple returns, reactors, drains, etc. In my big tank, i did do branched off returns, although for my 60 cube, it's not really a big enough tank to justify 2 returns, so i just did a single return.

In my case, having that many valves may ultimately be overkill. There's a few reasons I did that, main being that I wanted to run a reactor, I wanted a drain off the manifold to pump water out, and i wanted 1-2 extra valves for future needs. My stand is practically full, so not sure what those future needs will ever be, but if they do arrive, i'm covered, lol.


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