Help with sizing my intank BIO filter

[Bad Inferno]

Well I've caught the Discus thing and my single tank in the house is no longer good enough.. I need more "Aquatic" space thus I am venturing out into the garage with hopefully two new tanks. I am concerned about the summer time in what temperature the tanks will get to with a 40degree day.

I have an area that I potentially can setup 4 x 30" tanks on two shelf units.
My plan to start is to get two 30" tanks (30x14x18).and if I can succesfully breed get additional tanks to raise the fry. its 30" as I can fit two tanks side by side as the space I have (between two pillars) is just under 6 foot.

My question is about filters....
Wanted a cheap filter on a per tank basis to start me off and after consideration I think I want to section off one end of the tank for sponge, bioballs and power head (with the inclusion of a large air powered intank sponge). I understand I need it big enough to fit the power head however is there a rule ie 10-15% of the tank space for the Bio media. ?

cheers

[kalebjarrod]

check flukes rack system plan

http://www.discusforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=663

by the time you individually do one tank you would have paid for 2/3rds of the amount required to do all 4 of your tanks, and you will never need to worry because you could have oversized the filtration for this price.

I'm a big fan of over board filtration, and doing the job right the first time.

this does not have to be expensive.

[Bad Inferno]

I would have to be able to use one tank as quarantine ..I suppose I could just shut down it's filtration and use internal sponges for the 2-3 weeks of quarantine when I need to.

The only drawback I see is the pump costs and potentially UV costs if I use a common system. It ends up to be a 2 metre head (what I want is 3-4 volume changes an hour) which equates to 2000 l/hr. That sounds like some pump...$$$$$

[kalebjarrod]

ahhhh....

i just brought a 3000ltr per hour pump with a 2.5metre head for $69.85 + DEL

thats about 4 sponge filters?

UV is good but way overboard for this system. Just have great filtration, good water changes and heaters AND A GOOD QUARATINE SYSTEM and you'll be fine.

[flukes]

40c in Melbourne hahahah what did the sun hit the earth???

Back too a more serious topic, if your worried it will get too hot this system is actually good because the water cools as its passing through the pipes, the more it travels the cooler it gets.
Also if you can find a heater with an external thermerstat which you can then have you probes in the tanks and you heaters in the sumps..

Also thought about desease and breeding and being able too shut off one tank, which is easily fixed with a ball valve on the outlet and overflow. I was going to have a sponge filter in each tank anyway so it would already be seeded.

Still havent got this project up and running yet, bought the wood and had it planned for this weekend, but now ive done my fingers doesnt look like its gonna happen.

[Bad Inferno]

This weekend I was going to build my rack (wood) however as I walked into our stores at work I dreamt about a real racking system (steel) for my tanks. I just looked through the yellow pages and found a second hand industrial racking supplier so I will give them a call and see how much they want for a setup 1800 wide 400 deep and 1800 high.
Looked at Mentone fish shop this week and they have sectioned off a small triangle at the back of each tank with a bulkhead in the bottom for the overflow. Kind of nice I thought as you can use some bioballs in the tank overflow section and all they did is have the outlet pipe (only 15 cm long) feeding directly into the overflow section of the tank below until it got to the main filter biomass.

Does algae build up in PVC pipes ? ANother thing I thought of was to use 100mm pvc pipe filled with bioballs running up the rack verticaly. The overflow of each tank just connected into the main pipe which could then feed into an additonal biomass area before going into the sump.
The guy at OAFI just states use wool with an intank design. My problem is the width of the tanks in the space available means I have to use 14" width tanks which is really not big enough to run an internal bio filter in the back thus I am back in the filter merry-go-round

[flukes]

Mate what you discribed is eactly what i have in my 4x18x18's even the 100mm pvp pipe. I used the 100mm with a 15mm down the middle with holes drilled in the end inside the tube i have gravel at the bottom then ceramic noodles then a sponge at the top. I run a air line down it and works great as extra bio filter plus the fish spawn on the outside.
I also have a sectioned off part with bio balls etc which i connected a power head too get extraflow. Ill try take some pics tommorow for ya