Building a sump

Ok... tonight I built the biotower itself. Now I have basically what looks like an Acrylic file cabinet with 3 drawers, 2 - 3" and 1 5.5". All are 12x12. I drilled a 1 3/4" hole in the top of the tower. This is where the 1" bulkhead fitting will go once I get it. Currently the whole thing is 24" tall, but that will most likely change (Ill just chop off a few inches from the bottom of the tower).

Next thing is to build the sump itself. This will be just an acrylic tank that is wide enough to accomodate the biotower. All I need to do is figure out the height and length. Since it needs to go in a stand made for a 75G tank, Im thinking that it should be less that 3 feet long to leave some space in the stand for other stuff.
 
Ok the biotower and 3 trays are currently in the bathtub (see my other Cycling my bathtub thread). The top 2 3" trays both have drip plates for bottoms, the bottom 5.5" tray with the bioballs has an eggcrate bottom. Right now Im testing things out using a Mag Drive 500 pump to pump water from the tub into a hole in the top of the tower. When I get my 1" bulkhead fittings one of these will go into the hole in the tower. I think I may need to go with a larger pump though. The tower seems to easily be able to handle the flow from the pump. However I dont think the pump puts out enough flow to saturate all of biomedia evenly. In otherwords the drip trays arent dripping everywhere nice and evenly this is partially due to the fact that the bathtub is sloped so the biotower isnt level (I shimmed it on one side with some acrylic scrap to compensate for this), but even with the tower leveled Id be more comfortable if there was a greater flow of water over all of the balls. Maybe I should have built a narrower and higher tower (the inside dimensions of the trays are 12"x12") This would have made for less dispersion of the flow over the drip trays. But I figured that a smaller length and width would make it necessary to have a greater height to hold the same volume of bioballs (3 gallons). If I go with a bigger pump though I think the water will disperse more evenly in that it would "fill" the drip trays more. If I could pump enough volume to keep about 1/4" of water in the trays... Im Golden.

I had to switch back to my 10" 32 Tooth sawblade for cutting the Acrylic. I just couldnt get a nice straight/smooth edge with the 7" 150 tooth, even though it says its made for cutting plastic.

The last 2 decisions I need to make are:

1) How high should the biotower be? I have about 10" of acrylic underneath the bioballs. Some of this has to go. How much will determine what water level I can maintain in the sump without submerging the biomedia (although from what I hear, submerging the bio media isnt a complete disaster)

2) How long to make the sump itself. Since this is all going into a 2x4 framed stand under a 4 foot long tank...

The sump will be just wide enough to accomodate the biotower so I dont need to worry about that.

The sump height will be somewhere less than the height of the biotower, also not real important.
 
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I completed the sump today. I went with 14" wide (outside dimensions) 12" high, and 30" long for the sump tank. The biotower is still being tested in my bathtub. All I need to complete this is the 1" bulkhead fittings. Ill post a pic when I get everthing together. Where's a good place on the net to post pics?
 
I havent gotten the bulkhead fittings yet but the sump/biotower is in my tub and running great. Its very quiet! Just a teeny bit of trickling (this will get even more quiet once I have mechanical filter media in the trays (right now I only have the bio balls in there). The water level in the sump is about 6" this is just under the bioballs and more than enough to cover the mag drive return pump. At 6" this is half the height of the sump which would give me 10 gallons of space for an accidental overflow of the tank.
 
To sum this thread up, the sump/biotower is in the stand and working fine. Right now there is only a slight trickling sound coming from it due to the fact that the second drip tray in the biotower is currently empty. I have a 100 micron filter cloth in the top drip tray and soon I will add a 50 micron filter into the second tray, this will quiet down the noise. Also, the second tray can be used to hold chem filter, or crushed coral to raise the pH since I decided to go with black beauty sand for a substrate. All in all Im very pleased with the outcome. The sump does have a bit of a bow in it but the uprights in the stand keep it from bowing out further. I cant add a crossbrace because then I wouldnt be able to slide the trays out without removing the biotower. The bioball section currently has 2 gallons of balls in it, but from the looks of it I could possibly add 2 more gallons if I wanted. I did a power outage test and with the sump half full, there is more than enough room left over to hold any backflow from the tank.
 
One other thing, I decided to switch things around a bit. Instead of putting the 100 micron filter cloth in the top tray, I put a 12" x 12" sponge filter in there to catch the large stuff, then I put the 100 micron in the second tray. Since Im planning on keeping African Cichlids, Ill probably also put some crushed coral in the second tray on top of the filter cloth. I had to switch because the 100 micron cloth was getting clogged up faster than you can say Englebert Humperdink just filtering out the dust from the new substrate.

Ive been fishless cycling for about a week (I got some gravel from an lfs) and currently Im at .1ppm Nitrites.
 
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