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The New Aquarium Filtration, Plumbing & Setup

By King of DIY on

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So far, we've made two videos on this aquarium rack. First was aquascaping the bottom aquarium, getting it ready. You guys know we're turning this into an Asian aquarium. In the second video, we essentially finished plumbing the top tank and bottom tank, adding in the returns and drains. We installed that background as well and got it ready for the next step. We also actually filled the aquarium up partly just to get a head start on sinking the roots, which are probably going to float, but it's looking good right now. I got the tank filled by about 30% and nothing's moving around. It's looking good.

In today's video, we're going to finish plumbing the aquarium, get the filter installed, do some modifications I need to do, and essentially get this ready for water. Now we're going to be bouncing around back and forth on what we're going to be needing to do, simply because there is cure times that we have to wait for as well. The first thing I'm going to do back here though is install the elbows into the corresponding bulkheads on the other side of the aquariums. Now the smaller bulkheads just have these basic elbows here with a barb style ending, so we could just attach a hose and a hose clamp, but they have to be cemented into place first.

We have to make sure that there's enough room for the hose to actually go around the barbed ending as well. Otherwise, if we install it too close and too tight, we're not going to get that hose on there. The second or the one-and-a-half-inch bulkheads get something a little different. We're going to put an elbow with a barbed adapter on the end so the hose, again, can slip on quite easily.

Now, of course, we'll just use some PVC cement to attach this. There's ABS cement, there's PVC cement, and there's PVC to ABS cement, all different types of cement. I go ahead and I use the same clear PVC cement for everything. I sometimes even use Weld-On for acrylic, which cures really quickly, but it's more much more expensive to use. Anyways, moral of the story is, I find that it all works just fine. I'm also very generous with the cement. I'll let it drip all over the place just to make sure that I have a nice, tight fit, because a lot of the times, the connection isn't that tight and we can fill it with cement to ensure that we do get a snug fit.

It's not pretty, but most of my builds aren't pretty, they just work and they hold water. Up top, same idea. However, there's two things that I've learned with these aquarium systems and installing one after another again and again. If I have a leak, I have to drain all the aquariums, pull them out, fix the leak, push them back in. It's a nightmare. It's always because of one of two things. One, I forgot to tighten the bulkheads and make sure that they are quite snug. Two, I didn't use enough cement. Now, before I do any of this, I make sure the bulkheads are extremely tight. Not so tight so as to break the seal or crack the glass or anything, you do want to be careful. I use an extra amount of cement.

Now, any new plumbing application is always going to have leaks. Maybe it's a little drop here and there. Maybe you'll get lucky and you won't have any leaks at all, but for me, like I said, it's such a nightmare. When I do get a leak, there's so much more I have to do. It could be said that why don't I test fill here and make sure there's no leaks that way? It's just a big waste of water. I'd rather just do it right the first time and make sure I don't have any leaks. In doing so, I've got to use a little bit of extra cement and make sure that I double check that I've tightened all the bulkheads and whatnot.

With that said, I can't even begin to tell you guys how difficult it is to make these videos sometimes. Not only do I have to do everything properly, focus on the actual build, and putting everything together, but I also have to remember to instruct properly, talk properly, keep your attention. Then, of course, get the camera angles, make sure audio is good, and the lighting is good, et cetera. So much goes into these videos. I got to admit that I bust my butt for you guys on every single video. I know you guys appreciate it, and that's why I do it.

Now while we wait for that to cure, we have a couple of more things we could do right now. The first is this overflow here from the top aquarium needs to drain into the bottom aquarium, but we have a solid background to drill through. Now, custom aquariums made sure that this was watertight. They even siliconed all the seams, I was worried about humidity. They made sure, "Don't worry, you're not going to have humidity issues."

What I have to do though in order to get this into this aquarium is drill through the background. Now, I can run the pipe from the top tank down and into the bottom aquarium. The next thing we can do while we wait is drill a really big hole in the bottom of the aquarium stand. You might be asking yourself, "Why would you do that?" Simple answer. The reason being is that each one of these aquariums has its own dedicated plug. In order to get to this plug, I drill through the back and make sure that we actually have access.

It's actually a little bit of guesswork as to where I need to drill, but I measured the distance of where it's going to be, the stand's going to be, and how high it's going to be, and then drilled right into the background. Now these plugs are also GFCI plugs, which stands for ground fault circuit interrupter. Now, if one of the plugs get wet or some of the electrical components get wet, it's going to trip the breaker, which is clearly a good thing with these aquariums. The downside is I had to pair these up. There's two here, two here, two there. This is on a 30 amp breaker. The remaining three are on 15 amp breakers. All these aquariums basically have access to 15 amps, which is pretty much twice as much as I need or three times as much as I need.

Now, of course, as we continue to wait, we might as well get more things done. I have to connect these sumps somehow. There's a number of ways you could do that. One would be with bulkheads, running one bulkhead to the other and connecting them that way. However, one of the things that I like using are these Uniseals. They're very cheap and they can go against uneven surfaces and still create a seal. The way they work is you drill holes, you insert them into wherever you're inserting them into. As you can see, it's got its seal here. When we insert a pipe into it, it expands the rubber, creating a watertight seal that way.

I do it this way because these are far more flexible than a regular bulkhead for applications like this. I wouldn't plumb aquariums with these, but I've done them for all different types of filters, including barrels, sumps like this, and a select few other things. The downside is they're not that easy to work with. First thing I need to do though is drill the holes on one side and the other, install the Uniseals, then try to get this PVC pipe to connect the two.

I, of course, clean up the edges that I cut out as well. We don't want any inconsistencies on the Uniseal that potentially could cause leaking. I just take a razor blade and cut off any of the burrs left in it's place. Because we are cutting through a bit of a plastic, there's going to be some melting to an extent. This plastic doesn't really melt but we do get some barrels that need to be cut off. Then of course, installing the Uniseals is as easy as just putting it in place and pushing down on it. Make sure the surfaces are nice and clean. Otherwise, you're going to have a piece of debris underneath of it that could cause a leak.

Now, of course, we insert the PVC pipe into the Uniseal. Now this can be incredibly difficult. It's usually easy to get it into the first one, but to the second one, it's always much more difficult because we have so many more angles that we have to deal with. The good thing about this is that I don't have to worry about the sump itself. These things are basically indestructible. I believe it's made up of the same material that milk cartons are made up of. Not in the same way, but the same material. We know two things. One, it's not going to allow mold or anything to grow on it, just like your milk cartons. Two, that it's virtually indestructible, and of course, if its food safe, it's fish-safe.

We got one in there. Now, these sumps are a bit dirty because I've been storing them outside, but again, that really doesn't matter with these. Now I can get these to go together with lubricating it with just a little bit of water. If you find that's not working for you, a lot of the times, it's not going to, especially if you don't have the brute force push it together. I'm telling you, this is not easy. Probably the hardest part of the entire thing is getting these together. If you don't, you can use a water-based lubricant that's going to wash off and be fish-safe anyways.

With that said, I might hate installing these, but I absolutely love them because it's not a permanent situation. Watch this. I can move them around like this and no leaks occur. It's just a flexible option. It's just difficult to get them together. Okay, done. I do two things here, I leave a little bit of PVC pipe out on each side, maybe half inch or an inch, and I leave about a half inch in between in case the floor isn't level or something like that. This still has some movement that it can go through without leaking or pulling the pipes apart or anything like that.

Now, we can get back to the tank. For this, I always measure out how much of the pipe I'm going to need, or the hose that I'm going to need, and then, almost add an extra 20%, 30% because it's always better to have too much hose length than not enough. If you don't have enough, you've just wasted a length of hose. If you have too much, you can trim a little bit off. You're still wasting, but you're going to get the job done a lot easier.

Now, of course, the better option here would be to take all of your hose, connect it to the hose barb, run it through the stand and cut it off wherever you need it to be, but most of you are going to be buying your hose in certain lengths, you're not going to have rolls and rolls of tubing to go through. Pick the best option for yourself.

Now, this is where things get a little tricky. A lot of people will take this really rigid hose, or any really rubber hose or vinyl hose like this, and they recommend you dip it in hot water. That works okay. Take a $15, cheap Walmart heat gun though and just heat the whole thing up. This is going to make it soft enough and pliable so that it'll actually stretch around the ball valve or the hose barb and it's much easier to do.

Plus, you don't have to continuously have a hot water on hand. I guess hot water is okay if you just need one hose to melt, but these little tools definitely make things a lot easier. I've used heat guns for building 3D backgrounds, heating up these tubes. I've used them for a number of things. You'll get your $15 worth for sure.

You always want to heat up twice as much as that you're going to insert, though. Usually, no more than that or it'll get too flimsy. If you heat up twice as much as you need, it's going to be much easier to insert it onto the barb later on like so. Now I'll circle back and I'll put on some hose clamps later on, but for right now, this is perfect. There we have it. The two-side on the left here are returns, then we have a big drain, big drain. These ball valves or bulkheads in the middle of the tanks are going to be for water changes, internal ball valve drains half the water in each tank.

I will be upgrading all these tanks to a drip system very shortly, I've just got to get these set up. Now, we got to put on the main drains, which is a lot more difficult. Now the drain hose tends to be a lot more difficult to install simply because it's more rigid and has all these ridges along it that don't really expand when you warm it up or flex that much. We're going to do our best. This is another part of this racking system that's difficult and I don't look forward to. Definitely, connecting the sumps is number one. All we can really do is soften it up and hope for the best.

Worst thing that could possibly happen is one of these pipes or hoses pop off while you're not home and your pumps keep running or something along those lines. You want to make sure they're on there really good. That's as much as I can do for the plumbing behind it. I had to add some hose clamps, make sure it was on there nice and tight. Now, I'm going to go ahead and drain the water from this tank, push it into position, and we can move on to filtration and finishing this up. As the tank drains though, we got to keep moving.

I'm going to install the ball valves for the water change system, as well as put a ball valve on the return to this aquarium because the return from the sump isn't technically going to this tank, it's going to that tank and drains into this tank. In case I want to eventually separate them, which I have before, I want to have easy access. I could just turn a ball valve, attach another pump, or put a split in the pumps, or anything like that, and run water and keep them individual if I want to.

Install the ball valve, close it. We've got to put hose clamps on these still, but those are just a little fun and finishing touches we can do eventually. See how easy the heat gun and how convenient it comes in handy to do this type of thing instead of having to dip it in water? This is way easier. As for the return though, instead of putting the ball valve on there, I'm just going to put a plug on it for the return to the bottom aquarium instead of a ball valve. The plugs are a lot cheaper. If I do want to attach another pump, I'm not going to attach it to the ball valve, I'll just take the plug out and run it that way. Plug that off just like that.

Back into position, this can go. Now, not only do I have to get them into position, but I got to make sure they're lined up evenly this way, as well as spaced evenly, which this just doesn't look right if it's not. All of these rack systems I measured out, I have about three and a half inches that I could use, three and three-quarters of an inch, almost four inches between each racking system that is going to be usable.

Moving it in far distances is much easier than doing something more precision, believe it or not. Whenever moving these big racking systems though, or any big aquarium or stand, you always want to push from the bottom and exert the force that way. If I do it up top, I'm going to tip it over. Everything's always top-heavy. If I push from the top, I can cause twisting or bowing, but if I position from the bottom, it eliminates that. That's how I move all my big aquariums and stands. Just from the bottom, we pick up and push. I think that might have did it.

I take two measurements after that. I measure how far the front of the stand is out from the wall, and then, of course, how far it is from here. Now, if it's the same measurements from the wall on both sides, that means I have it square and everything's lined up the way it should be. These stand almost 30 inches. The fronts of the tanks almost stand 30 inches out from the wall, and three and a half, four inches in between, which is where they're at now.

Now before I move any further, I've got to make sure all of this is level. Now when leveling out a system like this, you do want to make sure you use a longer level as possible-- I have a four-foot one but it's not going to fit in here, just because you want to get the most accurate idea possible. This tank is not leveled this way. It's going to be lower on this side than it is on this side. I have to pick up this entire system over here. Front to back is looking good though. It's very common for levels not to be perfectly level usually. This isn't that bad if you take a look at it.

It's not that bad at all. We've got it just a hair off. I want that bubble right in the middle. When I lift it up to do so, I'm about a quarter-inch that needs to be lifted. Now for the past 15 years, I've leveled all of my aquariums and stands off. You don't level the aquarium, by the way, the aquarium needs to be touching around at all four corners at the very least. You never level the tank, you level the stand that it's sitting on. I've leveled all of my tank systems off with just simple wooden shims for about the past 15 years and it's always worked out well for me.

The downside to this racking system, and the only downside to it, if you want to call it that, is that it has a full bottom and all the weight is distributed around the perimeter. It doesn't have legs so that we could just shim a leg and we're fine. If I add a shim in here and it lifts the tank up a little bit, I then have to progressively get smaller on the shims as we go along so it offers support all the way around.

Shimming it is relatively easy, though. A lot of the times, we just tap in the wooden shims like this. I only have to shim this by a quarter-inch. I only have to lift this up by quarter-inch. This is a really easy job. Some of them, I've had to even out by a half-inch or more. Those prove to be much more difficult. I actually have a video on this from about six years ago that goes in-depth on shimming aquarium stands and so forth, but we'll just do this quickly.

Now, the minute I add in some shims and I've already banged a few in here, I go ahead and I immediately check where I'm at with the tank, and we're getting close. Now, not having your aquarium perfectly level is fine. A non-level aquarium isn't a big deal. I don't want to cause any panic here when you look at your tank and you see it off level. All you want to make sure is that all four corners of your aquarium are touching and there's no gaps in between. Ultimately, all four corners are going to be fine, especially if it's a glass aquarium with a lip that lifts off the bottom panel of the glass.

If all four corners are touching, that means there's no twisting. Twisting causes stress on the seams and the panel, and it's going to cause it to crack. When it comes to an acrylic aquarium, it needs to be fully supported on the bottom, including bracing underneath, I've shown you how to build these stands before. Not being level doesn't cause stress on the seams, it doesn't cause twisting, it's not going to cause the panels to break, it's just aesthetically unpleasing. With that said, when it comes to a sump system and you have an overflow that depends on the water level being level, that's why I'm shimming it.

The tank is now level, but now, we're left with this pretty ugly mess of all these wood sticking around and whatnot. Here's what I do. Take a razor blade and just etch them almost, like a small cut, and they're going to snap off usually right where you cut them. If not, take a hammer and do the same thing. Now we can, of course, come back and circle back to these shims, make them look a lot prettier, but I need to keep moving. We can always come back on a day we're not busy and clean this up a bit. Now the sump has to go in.

Now, the system is almost ready for water, as well as fish, but there's one thing I'm going to do that is going to have to wait until we actually stock it with fish, and that is adding the cycled media to the sumps. We won't be doing that today, we'll do it in the next video. We only really have enough time to put this all back together, install the lids, install some equipment.

In the next video, we'll finish scaping, we'll get everything up and running, and we'll stock the aquarium right away because I already have all of the cycled media ready to go for this sump. Start with the canopy first. Lids next.

All lids are on. I'm now going to install a little bit of the equipment, starting with the EcoTech Wave Maker, this is the MP40. This is incredibly easy to install. I'm going to keep the sponge over it or the tiny, little fish are going to get sucked into it. As the fish grow, and as they don't get big enough to get sucked into this, I just remove it, it looks a lot cleaner, but in the meantime, I leave the sponge on.

One of the things I'll have to do in the next video is get all of this up and running and programmed. I've already shown you guys. A lot of the stuff is repetitive, so there's going to be a few things that I skip by just so we don't keep showing the same thing over and over again. Even though a lot of this has already been done and shown, but I can't not show it because this is taking up several days of my time in order to set things up. I hope you guys get an idea of how much work actually goes in to setting these racks up. It is relatively simple, but after I've done it a few times, I can do it quite quickly. Practice makes perfect.

Now the pump I'm going to use is the Vectra M1. You guys have seen this already, but I picked up the wrong adapter. Go figure. This is a 1 1/4-inch adapter, I need a reducer that'll go from 1 1/4-inch down to 3/4-inch hose barb so it'll fit the plumbing. I forgot and I picked the wrong adapter so that's going to have to wait.

I still have to install the pump, the lighting, get the sump running, fill it up with water. I think I'm just going to do that on my own in the next week's video or in the next video after this. What we'll do is we'll finish scaping the bottom aquarium, we'll fill this back up with water, and then have the sump up and running, everything running. Finally, we'll add the fish. We'll do that all in the next video, or at least I hope that's how it's going to play out.

Of course, you guys are watching this the day of or the day before I actually do this. So far, I'm not running into any issues, but something could come up, a problem could come up that prolongs the video and I've got to do something else. Forgive me if the next video after this is not stocking the aquarium. Again, I'm only human, I'm going to make some mistakes here. Something might happen, there could be a leak, there could be something that takes me a couple of days to fix, or get the materials to fix it, or a part or a piece, whatever the case might be.

You guys know this. I'm not the only one setting up aquariums. As is, it's basically ready for water. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. I certainly enjoyed doing these things for you. If you join me in a couple of days, we should be stocking this tank.

About King of DIY

Joey is THE King of DIY, and when he built his gallery of aquariums he chose the Custom Aquariums rack system with 120-gallon tanks...a lot of them!

Joey Mullen is also known as the king of DIY, uarujoey or the DIY fishkeeper on social media. Providing education and inspiration for aquarium enthusiasts on YouTube, he is also the author of The Ultimate DIY Handbook; for the DIY Aquarist. His channel is about educating all levels of fish tank hobbyists who are passionate about caring for fish and keeping an aquarium of their own. Joey's aquarium rack systems were custom made by our professional fish tank engineers, here at Custom Aquariums.

Please watch the King of DIY's videos for some helpful information and great tips on diy aquarium keeping.

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