opinions on new plumbed setup

[revolutionhope]

Hi all,

I am in need some advice, I've no experience with plumbing whatsoever (with the exception of using canister filters with chillers if that counts) so please bear with me if my questions seem silly or obvious!

I came across 2 cheap 4 foot tanks with holes drilled already in the base of them that I am hoping to use. There are only a couple of minor scratches here and there and the only damage is on a back corner where the bezel is chipped - I intend to silicone this inside and out to be safe.

Anyway I have a few points that I'd really love help to address.

- How best to plumb these 2 sitting at the same height and integrate a sump.

- Is it feasible to use 2 eheim canisters with a my chiller connected to a sump? When I only ran one canister the flowrate was not quite enough and the chiller was turning on and off too frequently as a result. Do I have to just bite the bullet and fork out money on a pump instead?

- Opinions on how best to divide the setup into several bays for different colonies. Currently I am looking at following Paul Minett's lead using tropical flyscreen which has less than 0.4mm aperture but he has told me there is still the occasional fugitive baby.

Thanks in advance, once I actually start doing anything on this setup I will post the progress in a journal here. Once again NB I am totally clueless so I'd appreciate it if you could dumb down your suggestions for me :-)

Love and peace

Will

 

[Jarad]

I will put this on my list of 'stuff to do' for tomorrow :) Are the wiers of the same height and dimensions as each other ?
 

- How best to plumb these 2 sitting at the same height and integrate a sump.

I will do some sketches for you tomorrow :) 

- Is it feasible to use 2 eheim canisters with a my chiller connected to a sump? When I only ran one canister the flowrate was not quite enough and the chiller was turning on and off too frequently as a result. Do I have to just bite the bullet and fork out money on a pump instead?

With a well designed sump you can do away with the canister filters and just run the chiller, decent pumps can be purchased relatively cheaply ( In my display I am running a 1600LPH pump I paid $25 for new ) 

- Opinions on how best to divide the setup into several bays for different colonies. Currently I am looking at following Paul Minett's lead using tropical flyscreen which has less than 0.4mm aperture but he has told me there is still the occasional fugitive baby.

If you are getting rouge babies with a 0.4mm aperture it might be worth considering some very fine stainless steel mesh irrigation fittings, mine are 0.1mm and I do not get anything passing thru them. I scored these from my local irrigation supply store. To compensate for their inability to deal with larger waste I run air driven sponge filters in the tanks themselves. The only downside with running such a fine mesh is that I need to clean them daily with a tooth brush :)

Hope this helps and as mentioned I will draw some stuff up for you tomorrow :)

Cheers

[buck]

I think its every do able, you should be able to use at least one of the Eheims to run the chiller but it would be cheaper to run a pump i dare say. I have 2 pumps in my sump, one runs to the chiller and the big one that runs the to the tanks.both are in the last chamber and the return from the chiller is pointed at the pick up for the tank so the coolest water goes right to the tanks. There is 1 000 000 different ways to run a sump so depends what you wanna do. i changed min recently and still want to add some stuff but its basically k1 in to marine pure spheres and then i have heaps of void space to add to the total water volume. Im thinking about adding fine filter matt over the spheres to help filter out finer junk in the water     

The fly screen.... well paul's system seams to work so i would probably try to mimic his set up i forget what he has done with it, its been a while but i personally would run a sponge in each section as well as the sump. return water would be in end furthest away of course so the water passes through the screen. If you wanted you could possibly have a return in to each section to ensure they all get fresh water but that's extra pluming.   

If both weirs are all ready at the same height your just going to need to put some kind of barrier to stop shrimp falling down it. filter sponge or more fly screen should do the job.   

[revolutionhope]

Hey guys thanks heaps for the input.

I've decided to go with the pump and chiller option. Using 2 canisters just seems impractical even if it does increase the flow to an adequate rate to run the chiller properly.. I'll get enough money selling one canister to pay for a quality pump by the sound of it.

I actually came across this posted today on gumtree

They've said they'd take $150 for it. I'd love to have a refugium setup similar to what you have Jarad. Would this design work for that? I'm hoping to pick it up tonight it is a brand new sump.

I think I might just run a single tank for now and setup the other tank as a seperate system with different WP. Will save some time and money no doubt too.

Cheers!

-edit- not grabbing the sump. Have been learning a bit from Jarad. Will have an update soon once I've figured a few basics out.
Will

[buck]

good call not getting that sump dude! keen to see what your next movie is :)