HOW TO： Build an aquarium sump - fluidized moving bed filter

Hi everybody, Joey here again and welcome back. So in today's video, I'm going to start off with part 1 of a 3 part series on sumps. I plan to show you how to build the 3 most common types of sumps based on the method of filtration used. When it comes to methods of filtration, I break them down into the state the biological media is actually in, which is submerged, emerged, and fluidized, meaning the media is below water, above water, or in a fluidized or constantly moving state. I plan to show you the basic layout on how to build one, some tips and ideas for them, how to size them for your aquarium, and the pros and cons to each method, which is what I'm really interested in showing you. With that said, today I'm going to start off with the fluidized filter. Now I've shown you guys how to make many different ways to build a fluidized filter, however I want to start out with this method as the pros and cons are something that I've never spoken about before and they're very important as well as revealing and interesting. Let's start out with a basic layout for the sump. This can be made with something as simple as two pieces of acrylic siliconed in place, leaving enough room on one side for your pump and other equipment, while on the other side, enough room for mechanical filtration, which can be as simple as some sponge, filter socks, or even some simple filter floss. That's up to you though, I'm just going to show you the basics. The easiest way to get water from one side to the other is by drilling holes. Since I'm using K1 for this filter, I made the hole 7 16th of an inch, as the K1 is a half an inch. This will contain the K1 while allowing ample water flow. How many holes you need depends on the flow required, but I found that each 7 16th hole will flow around 10 gallons per hour through it. However, adding at least 25-50% more holes that you actually need will account for any clogging or changes in flow. I also recommend running almost any sump at 6 times the volume of your main system, as a good rule of thumb, meaning that if your main aquarium is 100 gallons, you'll want to run the filter return pump at 600 gallons per hour. How much media you need depends on the fish kept and the ammonia produced, but it can be really broken down to exact numbers like I did in my book. However, a good rule of thumb is around 15 liters for the average 100 gallon aquarium stocking. The size of the sump should be large enough to accommodate the media, equipment, and additional water that will drain when the power goes out. Now to size the filter, start out with how much media you'll be using. You'll need the chamber to be large enough to hold 60% media and 40% water. So for example, 6 gallons of media will need 10 gallons of space. To figure out how much water will drain into the sump during a power outage, a simple rule of thumb that I like to use is to take the volume of your aquarium and divide that by the height of the tank. For example, a 24 inch tall 100 gallon aquarium would drain around 4 gallons of water. Now usually it's less, but this is a good start. Using the 100 gallon tank example, we would use 15 liters of media for it, needing around 7 gallons of space. We also know that around 4 gallons of extra space in the sump will be needed when the power goes out, so the sump needs to be more than 11 gallons. Once we account for the equipment and mechanical chamber, we are around 20 gallons. However, a fluidized sump needs to be filled to work properly, so I suggest going with a 33 gallon tank in that example to allow for the sump to still function properly while still allowing for space for the additional water to drain into. With the size of the sump now determined, with this design it's best to put your airline on each end of the chamber, which would force the media away from the holes, yet placing the airlines far enough from those holes so that the bubbles don't get sucked in. I used a plastic airline silicone to a piece of tile to weigh it down. The amount of air needed is generally around 1 liter per minute of air per liter of media. Now let's move on to the pros and cons. Okay so let's go over the pros first. It's a very efficient and self-cleaning system. The reason it's self-cleaning is simple. As the media fluidizes, it's constantly knocking into each other. As it's knocking into each other, it's knocking off all of the old bacteria and detritus that might have collected on the media, so you technically never have to clean it. The reason why it's so efficient is for the exact same reason that it's self-cleaning. As the media is fluidizing and hitting each other, it's knocking off all of the older bacteria, only allowing the younger and more efficient bacteria to remain. And those are pretty much the two biggest pros to a fluidized filter. Other than that, let's move on to the cons. Now the cons are this, you'll notice that I'm talking a little bit louder and you might even be able to hear it. What I'm getting at is this is loud. Let me show you how loud it actually is. Okay so what I really wanted to do here was give you a really good idea on the sound. Now I could have recorded the noise that the filter makes with my camera or some audio equipment, however, a lot of the times those are misleading. So I'm going to give you a visual idea. So I have this, just this simple app on my iPhone that is measuring the sound within a room. It's just called DB Meter Pro. So as you can see, in the center here, it's going to give me a reading of what the decibel meter in the room will be, which averages around 40 decibels. So I'm just using that as my benchmark because this app actually tells me that a quiet home is 40 decibels. So I calibrated it to be 40 decibels in every room upstairs in my home. Now let's take a look at the filter. Okay so on the other side of this wall and door is my fish tank and the filter. And to give you an idea of what it's like behind something like this. So we're averaging at about 46 decibels, 45 decibels. So we're already able to hear it. Okay so now we've come inside the door and the filter is about 12 feet away from me. And we're now reading at an average of about 56. So we're now 16 decibel difference from being in this room to being upstairs. Okay so now we're right on top of it. And standing 2 feet away from the filter to the actual phone, we average at about 65 decibels. When we go about 8 inches on top of the filter, we average at about 75 decibels. Okay so it's loud. Let's move on to the next one. It's also expensive to set something like this up. I'm using over 100 liters of K1 coldness in here and I paid about $300 just for the media. That sounds like a lot of money. However a lot of you are buying it in much smaller quantities and at those small quantities it's a lot more expensive. And totally just not worth it at that price. In addition to the cost of the media itself, I'm also going to need additional equipment like a large air pump. Now I'm fluidizing about 100 liters of K1 in here. So I need an air pump sized at about 100 liters per minute. And that size of a pump costs $250 for me. Plus airline, air stones, and so forth. So it all adds up. So just for the media and the air pump, I'm already looking at $550. We're not even concluding the sump or the barrel or however else you make it. We're just counting the media and the equipment to run it. And then there's the additional power costs. I don't only have to pay for the regular equipment costs like my heaters, my regular water pump, lights, that sort of thing. I'm also have to have the additional cost of an air pump running which is 40, 50, 60 watts. Maybe even more when you get up to using air pumps this big. That might not sound like a lot of watts. Maybe it's only costing me $4 or $5 a month extra for that pump. But that's $50, $60 a year. Over the course of two or three years it starts to add up pretty quick. So like I said, it's expensive. It also takes longer this cycle than any other method of filtration. Obviously the bacteria is not going to have an easy time to settle on the media when it's constantly fluidizing. So I have found that it takes probably an additional 20-30% longer to cycle than say your traditional media or traditional sump would. They also use up a lot of space. In the coming videos on talking about a submerged and an emerged sump, you'll see in comparison that we have to use a lot more media to accomplish the same job when it comes to a fluidized filter. So they do take up a lot of space. On top of that, it's humid. No matter what I do, because I have pipes going into it, I'd probably have to redesign this filter to try to keep humidity down. But humidity is always high in here, and under this tank I have to run a really large dehumidifier. Water is always going to splash as well. Because we have so many bubbles and so much fluidization going, it's just basically boiling. And sometimes depending on the design it can just simply continuously make a mess. As you can see, the lid here is just completely water stained and it's a mess. At the end of the day, I'm just sharing my pros and cons to it. You guys might have different opinions or somebody might experience something else, but this is coming from somebody that's been using it exclusively to support really expensive fish for several years. I think the big question you guys might have is, if it has so many cons as opposed to pros, why do I use it? Well, I still feel as though a fluidized filter is the most efficient method of filtration you could have for your aquarium. However, that's just my opinion, those are my thoughts. Now I would recommend this sump for people with big tanks and big fish that need an efficient and powerful filter. With the pros and cons I've listed, I'm sure you can decide if this filter is right for you or not. Anyways guys, I hope that you enjoyed part one of this series. I also wanted to thank you for watching, and I'll see you guys next week when we take a look at the Emerge Sump.