Quote:
Originally Posted by
mproctor4 http:///forum/thread/383967/help-my-new-tank#post_3362325
If you are planning on running this tank long term, I think a turf scrubber is a great idea. I recently put one in one side of my sump. For a school project however, it may get more expensive than you had hoped. To get enough flow to the turf scrubber you will probably need 2 pumps-one for the scrubber and one to return the water back to the tank.
I have been happy with my diy filter and it was fairly inexpensive. I took a large rubber maid container and placed under the stand, used an overflow box to get the water from the tank to the filter. I bought a 4 drawer rubbermaid/sterilite (can't remember which) container. It has 2 small drawers on the top and 2 larger drawers underneath. I took the bottom drawer out, took the wheels off, and placed in the large rubbermaid container. I drilled LOTS of holes in all the other drawers--aprrox. 3/4" apart. On the side of the top drawer I made holes to put the tube from the overflow box (this is where the water comes into the filter if I wasn't clear). The second drawer contains various layers of filter material...ie. chemi-purr/carbon/couple of premade filter pads and then topped with floss. The third drawer started with bioballs, which I have been slowly trying to convert to live rock rubble. Keep the water level just below the bottom of the third drawer to reduce the noise. Put the return pump anywhere in the rubbermaid container. If you don't want to spend the money on an overflow box, you could siphon water out of your tank through a pvc pipe, but if you are keeping the tank up I would highly recommend an overflow box to avoid floods. You can also get the pumps on an auction web site for much cheaper than LFS.
Besides being inexpensive, there are a couple of other things I like about this: it is easy to clean, just pull the drawer out and change the floss or whatever you are using and easy to get to the bioballs to occassionally rinse them. You can hide your heater in there. I had a large area to put a clamp on light and grown cheato. Large area to "banish" naughty creatures, like crabs, etc that you later decide you don't want in your tank. Also plenty of room for a small scrubber if you want to add one. There are some disadvantages: more noise than some filters and it takes up more space.
It actually sounds like a fun project, just would irritate me to spend that much on a filter unless I was planning on using it long term.
I don't suppose you have any pictures..it sounds pretty cool and I would love to see it.
A turf scubber is way cheaper than a skimmer, and to be honest works better. My skimmer does nothing for removing phosphats or nitrates. A turf scrubber would take care of it all.
