Internal w/d design

[Sploke]

I'm getting ready to start building the plywood tank for my turtle. I was planning on putting it on a central sump system, but after thinking about quarantining feeder fish every time I fed her, I decided that would be too much of a pain, so I am going to keep it separate. The tank is going to be 4'x5'x18", and should hold around 220 gallons or so. I'm thinking I'll build a panel into the back and put some sort of internal wet/dry system behind it, so it will all be in one place and accessible, but hidden from view. I'm thinking something along the lines of the Seaclear systems. Anyone built one before, or have any suggestions on how I should go about doing this? The one requirement is it needs to have heavy mech filtration thats easy to change, its a very messy tank.

[DrJoe]

Can you put in several bottom drains? It's going to be difficult to circulate the water and collect all the garbage w/o suspending to in the water. If you can tie five 2" drains w/grates together and pump them to the filter, you could still keep it inside the perimeter of the tank by bringing the pipe up thru the filter box area and then thru a W/D system.

If that won't work for you, let us know and we'll try and think of something else.

Dr Joe

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[Sploke]

The tank is going to be practically on the floor so I don't think there will be enough room underneath for plumbing. I'm also planning on using several powerheads to create an underwater jet system like here: http://cichlid-forum.com/articles/ug_jets.php to both remove particles from the water as well as keep them from settling, so the pump can grab them and put them through another mech filter.

[MrCracker2u]

You can make an in tank sump along the lines of a corner overflow box. I have a 15gln one that I built into an 80gln tank using plexi glass egg crate light difuser and silicone. These in tank sumps are very comon in acrylic S/W systems the return pump sits under the media. Make the drip plate fit as tight as possible so the edges don't leak. keep the water leveel in the sump just below the bio media and with an auto top of to keep that distance as small as possible it is very quiet.

[Shocker6966]

Have you thought about incorporating it into a waterfall? Water feeds through bio media, down the waterfall and back into the pond. The waterfall itself should offer a certain degree of bio filtration itself if you add some river rock to it.