Transcript
Intro
this is custom aquarium seamless sump brand new never used and we're about to get it into a brand new 450 gallon let's go [Music] welcome to caveman Aquatics if it's your first time here my name is Kev and yes we are in the middle of hooking up a brand new 450 gallon tank as well as a brand new Sump System that will be on that tank now I'm gonna go through the very basic common knowledge of a sump as well as get this thing installed and the reason why it's going to be super basic common knowledge is because the sump is also brand new to me so I'm also learning the basics first we're going to cover all those little things for anyone that's brand new to some for anyone that's been a little intimidated about using sumps like all the reasons that I've been intimidated but we're going to get through it today together for those of you just starting out with a tank I do want to go over the super simple basic stuff many of you are probably used to a canister or an hob something that has a filter intake that sucks water out of the tank goes through your filter and then gets spit out of an output a sump Works a little bit differently with a sump your tank fills to the top and then it basically overflows out of the tank through your drilled holes that you got at the top of the tank or you could also buy an overflow system that you can add to a tank that's not drilled the water overflows and then comes into your sump once it's in the sump it goes through whatever Chambers you got set up hits a pump your pump then pumps the water back up to your tank and comes back into your tank through the return holes also at the top of your tank that's how a sump works in the most basic form as you can see custom aquarium seamless sump come completely separated and you can get more options depending on what you need for your tank what I got here is my sock tub then I got my baffle tub which contains the pumps to send the water back to your tank then I've got my evaporation Reservoir and finally I've got a reservoir for a refugium or just extra biomedia or whatever you wanted to add to this extra space having this extra Reservoir as a refugium also increases the total volume of water for your tank system these seamless sumps come with the bulkheads already installed and pre-drilled so you got a pre-drilled bulkhead on the bottom here and on the bottom of your baffle chamber that means that this is your evaporation Reservoir if you added a refugium reservoir then you'll have another bulkhead on the top as well as a top bulkhead in your refugium Reservoir so depending on how these bulkheads are drilled and their locations is what determines the purpose of these reservoirs so when your water overflows from the tank it comes in to the sock tub you'll have drain lines coming into each one of these socks these socks what they do is actually mechanically filter your water as water passes through the sock it's going to trap any detritus waste and poop inside the sock and then the water will just seep out of the sock filling up this entire chamber yes you do have to remove replace and clean out these socks periodically some people say every day every two days it all depends on your tank and your biolu as this tub fills up and reaches the top here it will then overflow and spill out of this little spigot into your next chamber which conveniently gets connected to the first here water will enter the baffle chamber which the baffle chamber consists of these four or five let me come five of these little baskets which you can fill with biomedia you can put chemical media in here you could also put the top tray with a nice pad of filter floss or a polishing pad that's just going to add another small layer of mechanical filtration before the water reaches the biomedia that are in the trace underneath of it you got five of these trays you stack them up in here nicely the water goes down underneath the baffle and up into this next chamber which is where your pumps are going to be located in here your pumps are going to be connected with flex hose that comes out of these two holes and these Flex holes go back up to your tank to your return Hold You could also add your heaters right here into this little side chamber that way the wires from your pump and your heaters will all go out through here and straight into your outlet plug now a little bit more common knowledge for those of you that are not new to sumps but probably good information to everybody that is new to sums like myself apparently every single sump always loses water due to evaporation right it's an open system under your tank you got warm pumps working in there heating up the water you got heaters in there heating up the water and that's going to cause evaporation and you're going to drop the water level inside your sump another very important thing when it comes to sumps is maintaining the water level that you want to have in there you don't want it to drop too low or get too high because it's going to throw things off with that being said enter the evaporation Reservoir what this puppy does right here is this stays full of water so that when your pump chamber starts to evaporate and water drops from here because this is where most of the water will evaporated worry from first the one containing your pumps and your heaters and stuff the evaporation Reservoir is going to act as an equilibrium as water levels drop from your baffle chamber here the water in the reservoir will also drop and fill this chamber to keep both levels of water equal this evaporation Reservoir is going to prevent you from having to top off your baffle chamber as water evaporates from it so I know what your next question is going to be right well if water is evaporating from the baffle chamber where the pumps are in why wouldn't water just evaporate from the evaporation Reservoir good question and the answer is it will evaporate from there as well something that custom aquarium supplies you with is this little t-valve which allows your pump chamber to not only pump water back up to your tank but with this t-valve the pump is also going to fill the evaporation Reservoir how cool is that the pump is going to feed the reservoir that also feeds itself to keep it at an equal level I'm telling you this stuff is fascinating okay so what's this last puppy or this last puppy is the refugium reservoir in here is where I can keep a bunch of live plants if I wanted to I can keep this as I wouldn't necessarily call this a quarantine chamber because it's still within the same system of the whole tank but if you got a fish that's getting beat up you can separate him from everybody else by keeping him in this tub so it's essentially its own little separate fish tank but in the same water system you can also fill this bad boy up with a bunch of biomedia like Matrix or bio blocks or anything like that and I think Matrix is going to work specifically well in that chamber why because in that Reservoir is most likely going to get a very low flow rate of water and when we're trying to grow anaerobic bacteria what we want is low oxygen environment and low flow environment right so if I pack a bunch of Matrix into this chamber it's a very good chance of possibly growing anaerobic bacteria helping even more along with the plants that are going to be in this tank and the plants that are going to be in the refugium to drop those nitrate levels and extend and the amount of time it takes between my water changes that doesn't mean that I'm going to be able to stop water changing this tank and never have to water change a 450 gallon no way it does not mean that for example you guys all know in my 210 and in my 150 I do big weekly water changes I am not planning to do weekly water changes on a 450 gallon tank I'm hoping to be able to do bi-weekly but my greatest hope is to be able to do monthly water changes if I can do only one water change a month on this tank because the nitrate levels stay at a nice decent level I'm gold and I truly believe that it's going to be the sump that helps me achieve this as you can
Installation
see I did already install the bulkheads on the tank don't judge my painting job guys it's not done yet I still got to put one more coat but the bulkheads are fairly simple to install you unscrew them you put one end on this side of the tank on the wet side and you put your dry side on the back end of the tank super simple to do very easy custom aquariums is also going to send you the hoses that you require at the length that you require for your specific tank these are not all the same size so make sure you know which one you're putting in the which hole before you lock things up so my sock tub already came with all the socks pre-installed but they're super easy to pull out just pull them out wash replace them get a new one slide it right back in boom your stops are in for installation the first thing we're going to do is put our elbows into these holes I've got three overflows so I'm only connecting three elbows these do fit nice and snug which is a good thing and this last one will just be a backup in case I ever decide to do another overflow now if you notice I connected these elbows and I just pushed them in hand tight your hose connections that go on this side of the elbow these should be cement glued onto the elbows anything that's white that connects to Black needs to be cement glued here at the sump cement glued and at the top of the tank at your bulkhead needs to also be cement glued but of course before we glue anything we're going to dry fit everything to make sure everything is copacetic that's all you got to do to set up this tub this is going right under the tank next one is the baffle tub which goes right in and connects to the sock tub if we lift this one up and slides right in and now both of these are connected together next we got the EVAP Reservoir now we got the whole sump in and under the tank we're going to dry fit the connections first before cementing anything here's your connection for baffle to evaporation Reservoir and we've got another one identical for your connection to the evaporation Reservoir to your refugium Reservoir boom nice and snug boom nice and snug here's our sump fully installed under the tank and fully connected dry fitted all of the chambers connected together now we're going to go to the back and do the hose work then from the back of the tank you want to dry fit your elbows to your hose and your elbow to your bulkhead and make sure that everything reaches where it needs to reach and matches where it needs to match giving you something that pretty much looks like this behind your tank again I'm only using three overflows so the fourth one over there is plugged but that's what it should look like behind your tank now we're going to go ahead and dry fit the return lines you absolutely will need to heat up your return line in order to get this adapter onto it I simply held my holes under some hot water for about 30 45 seconds and I will tell you you are going to need some strength still it does take a little bit of effort to get this adapter into the hose but this is how snug you want it to be anyway this connection coming out of this hose you can never be too safe which is why they Supply you with nice little clamps to make sure that this does not ever come out because if this ever did come out you're going to have big big problems there you go better safe than sorry nice and snug right into the hole now we're going to take our measurement and find out where we need to cut this thing Mark the Spot under the tank where it needs to get cut boom not the cleanest cut in the world but hey we're not handyman here we're not Carpenter we're fish Keepers we're on the same process for the rest of your return lines and you should end up with something that looks like this I've got three overflows which are the white hoses and two return lines which are the green hoses not too bad for a guy who can't Carpenter anything after you successfully dry fitted everything your next step is to cement glue every single connection outside of the tank where white needs black or green means black anything outside of the tank going into the tank needs to be cement glued and up here at the tank and down there at the Sun including your connections at the front of your sump where your reservoirs are connecting to each other those also need to get cement glued I'm using ODI Fusion clear medium PVC cement I'll have a link to this in my description check it out now I'm not going to glue my connections yet because I don't have the pump for the sump yet I want to wait for that and make sure I cut these hoses to the right specs in the right sizes before I start gluing anything that's going to stay in place so our next step that we're gonna do is we're going to start attacking everything that goes inside the tank
Overflow
check these pieces out first stop is your actual overflow this is where the water level rises and goes into here overflows through this grade and out your tube out the back of your tank now this does come with a cover that you can screw into place if you wanted to keep this at an angle so that it doesn't fall off but you don't have to screw it down if you're just going to have it upright like this inside of here you get these two grommets the reason for these grommets if your water is filling this up and getting sucked down that drain too quickly you may get a lot of air also being sucked down there and you'll get a loud gurgling noise if you put the small grommet in there it'll prevent water from going down there as fast and maybe it'll prevent air from going down the hole as well filling this up a little bit more and you'll lose that sound if that doesn't do it you got another size grommet which is a little bit bigger put the biggest one in there and that'll create an even smaller hole preventing water from going down even faster preventing that gurgling sound so it's up to your tank how it's set up what level you got your water at so you have to determine if you need one or one of these grommets or no grommet at all to prevent that gurgling air sound going down your overflow grab your overflow and it simply goes right into the bulkhead bang now you don't have to have this vertical going out into the tank you can simply spin this over here and keep it parallel with the back glass which is the way that I prefer that looks way better I don't know how well you can see it because I just see a lot of black back there a great tip that I got from my Man mark over at custom aquariums is this chamber here can sometimes get dirty and you might need to remove it clean it out replace it with one of your backup ones just in case right so you would want to have the access to just remove this just like this the way I did but this elbow here you don't want it to be removable you don't want it to get loose you don't want it to drop in the tank whenever you go to remove this part so a great idea is to also cement glue this part of your elbow cement glue it to your bulkhead so that this elbow never moves and never leaves from there huh and then when you want to replace this or clean this you just pull this out once it's clean grab the new one pop it right back there and that's all you got to worry about these are your return vowels now I know it may look a little wonky but it's not that hard this end goes into your bulkhead at the back of your tank right and this here is your adjustable spout so you can point your output to the direction you want it to point to right pretty cool and this here is your siphon Stoppers if you're water level in your tank ever drops below these siphon Stoppers once air gets into here it will break the siphon that way you don't overflow your sunk pretty cool invention right here must have push it in there if it's nice and snug for now nice and straight and straight and point my output that way just like that one's pointing that way here's a good look at the internal tank equipment the three overflows and the two output returns as you can see they got a very nice looking Sleek look especially against that black background I like it very much it's day two of installing the sump and we're going to
Pond Matrix
finish off by adding the media and our equipment that we're going to be using in the song what media are we going to be using Pond Matrix sent to me by my awesome sponsor cchem Laboratories thank you very much see Kim this stuff is heavy so why Palm Matrix over regular Matrix well for one it's bigger and more suitable for a sump since you have more space for it but it's going to work just like Matrix providing you a bunch of surface area for beneficial bacteria to grow on as well as an area for anaerobic bacteria to grow in which is going to help us with our nitrates first thing we're going to do is back this stuff up give it a good rinse and get it into the
Media Bags
sun I'll be using these extra large media bags to make sure I get as much Matrix into the sump as possible don't worry I'll have a link for you guys in the description as usual I think that's more than enough all right let's give this stuff a good rinse you always want to rinse off any new media before installing it to your tank it's just gonna come a little Dusty and you don't want any of that dust saturating through your tank making your filters work harder at getting it out so just rinse it off make sure it's clean before you install in that first suck which is going to work great at helping produce nitrifying bacteria bag number three all right now I'm gonna go ahead and fill the next three bags of palm Matrix that are going to go into that refugium Reservoir granted no matter where I put it in the sump it's going to grow anaerobic bacteria but where there's very low flow is going to grow even faster and even better and be much more
Refugium Reservoir
efficient for these three bags that are going into the refugium reservoir I do want to pack them really tight all the way full so there's very little play very little Motion in the bag which will help in reducing the flow through the Matrix even more plus I got a ton of Matrix and I want to use it all also the refugium reservoir is much bigger and has a much wider opening than the soft tub so I can make these bags a little fatter so that's what I'm gonna do that's a lot of palm Matrix let's go first bag for the refugium [Music] fits like a glove bag number two check it out finally bag number three a little smaller than the first two but that's okay because they fit in there perfectly there's our three bags in the refugium reservoir plenty of space to fill up with water it's going to work great now I know what you're thinking man I'm gonna have to
Adding Bio Media
buy all that additional Matrix for my son well you can and you should if you got a big huge tank like this the more bio media the better but don't sleep on custom aquariums because they also send you their really cool bio media which is a ceramic bioball that is very small in size check them out and these fit conveniently well in the five baskets that come with your song these baskets like we mentioned earlier are conveniently located right after the sock tub and is the first place that water hits after it goes through your socks and because these ceramic bowls are so small they take up less space in the basket meaning I could put more of these in the basket than I can the pawn Matrix so I'm Gonna Fill Up all five of my baskets with custom aquariums ceramic biomedium scratch that I'm Gonna Fill Up four of the baskets with the biomedia the top basket I'm Gonna Save for chemical media more specifically pureigen which is going to be very easy to remove and replace out of the top basket when I need to these feel like little glass marbles pretty cool that's one of the beauties of a some guy is that you have so much space to mix up your biomedia and try different things I left this part in here for two reasons one because I thought the sound is really funny but two is to show you how not to add these into your baskets uh there's a better way I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner [Applause] [Music] and I got just enough to just layer the bottom here of the bottom [Applause] perfect and my purigen is going to go right on top here that emptied out one of the buckets that come with your sump I received two of these buckets this looks like a four liter bucket and when I buy more media bags I'm Gonna Fill the bags with the entire second bucket and find the place for them in the sump as well more media never hurt nobody I got it might as well use it right so I've got the Puritan that I wanted to add to those baskets but I don't have any more bags so I'm gonna have to bypass this for now but what I am going to do instead is put these polishing pads in the top of that tray now if you guys know what these are these are the Fluval polishing pads for your fx6 which is all that I got right now but I'm gonna cut them to shape and put them right here on the top basket just to add another layer of fine mechanical filtration before water hits that biomedia and onto the rest of the Sun so trying to cut them was starting
Filling the Basket
to annoy me so instead I just stuffed them into the basket now it's not going to catch every single particle and no water is going to find its way around it no but is it going to do a good job of catching those fine little materials yeah it will so this will do for now finally the top layer do my best to give you guys a good look in there you can do this kind of tough being under the under the tank this reminds me that I gotta start cement gluing this stuff on okay I've been avoiding it long enough it's time to cement glue the hoses both on the sump and up at the back of the tank gotta do it I know this view is terrible but it's very difficult to get a camera back here let alone some light uh this is a super tight space and I had to just get it done my son is in front holding the sump while I push the hoses into the elbows hopefully you guys can tell what's going on here but this is the best view I can provide in this super duper tight space as you can see this was not easy that was not easy in that tight space right there not easy at all now let's start gluing the top now you don't have to cake the cement on like I did right here but a nice light coating inside the bulkhead as well as on your elbows is all that you need make sure that you don't forget inside the elbow to the bulkhead inside the elbow where the hose connection goes and on the hose itself like I mentioned
Gluing the Top
on the inside of the tank I do want to glue this elbow to the bulkhead just to keep this elbow in place at all times even when I want to remove the Overflow part yes I'm missing one more elbow that's getting shipped to me overnight we don't have it right now we'll deal with it later don't forget to cement your elbows on the outside of your Sun one more for your refugium Reservoir to your evaporator Reservoir golden got so hyped that I moved that tank by myself that I almost forgot the equipment in the sump we're putting some high gear smart titanium steel heaters into the sump supplied to me by sea chem
Filling the Sump
my amazing sponsor thank you again ckem for all the materials that you supply for this tank couldn't have done it without you let's check these babies out wow look at that these look beautiful titanium heater with a temperature controller together love it this is going right in our summer we got the two Hydro heaters installed I got one inside my evap Reservoir and the other one in the baffle now these can be moved at a later time if I want to but for now that's where they're gonna go what's left to do guys only the best part let's fill this puppy up I've been waiting for this my whole life here we go the moment of truth so one of the cool things I noticed already about the sump is you could still see the water level right through that white plastic so you always know where your water level is in the sun that's very good feature so why am I only filling the sump and I'm not filling the tank well number one tomorrow we're going to start aquascaping the tank so it's got to stay dry because we're putting in Plants we're putting in the substrate all that good stuff is tomorrow which tomorrow's video is actually right up here in the right hand corner the second reason I want to put up the sum now is because I also want to test for any leaks that may happen if there's leaks into some now I could quickly drain the sump fix those leaks before having to worry about the entire tank and sumps being filled with water and finally the last reason why I want to fill the thumb up now is to get that biomedia nice and wet submerge in the water so I can also dose with some C chem stability right now and just let that stuff soak and marinate in that stability marinate in that bacteria so that tomorrow when we're all done and we fill the tank up I already got a little bit of a head start with the bacteria started to grow on that biomedia let's take a look at the The Fill right here I'm really excited to see when the first baffle fills up and goes into the next one he's almost full to the top okay the hose is submerged and then she's starting to drip into the next baffle don't know if you guys can see it but I see the drip that's pretty cool check out the bottom there that water level starting to rise it's a pretty smooth drip there too it's kind of not a big rush of water coming into the next one not what I was expecting nice calm little waterfall coming into the next baffle I hope you guys can see it on the camera I know it's kind of dark I've got no light under here not yet anyway so check out the fill line there on the baffle as the water goes down to the bottom under the baffle and now it's coming up into the next chamber then from here the water level will start to spill over there it is I can hear it and now you can see the water level rising at the bottom there and as it rises it's going to also go through this connection and start to fill the EVAP chamber at the same time the EVAP Reservoir and the second baffle will both always be full to the same level and this little heater thing keeps falling off I'll get it to stick better later there it is again so check out these two water levels right above the bulkhead there and in the EVAP it's right above the bulkhead same level and so far so good no leaks I don't see any drips right there I don't see well there's no drips here yet because the water level's not there yet I see drips I see leaks let's fix that okay so guess what the bulkhead that was already pre-drilled into the sump was a little bit loose over there where the leak was so guess what I'm doing I'm checking all the other ones I haven't done this one yet let's see how much I can spin it look at that this one would probably have leaked as well as we got this far there it is and that right there ladies and gentlemen is exactly why we do a leak test before filling the entire tank and letting it overflow into the sump this was much easier to stop filling right now and address the problem and fix the problem not a big problem something I should have checked on my own anyway to begin with but I'm glad I found it now that's why we do the leak test so no more drip under this bulkhead right here still a little wet there at the bottom but some water got underneath it that's all right but the problem is fixed there is no more drip now let's continue filling this bad boy up water level is about to reach the next bulkhead and once it does it will go into the final refugium chamber I hear it's starting to fill over there and we're checking for leaks and now we keep an eye on this water level here by the way guys the reason why I have not hooked up those return lines is because I don't have the pumps yet so I don't want to cut them yet and cut them too short but we'll do that later I'm gonna let that bag of biomedia on top get underwater and once it is I'll stop filling it all right looks like it's submerged some looks pretty full to me safe to cut it let's do it how am I going to jump start the cycle and my bacterial growth Prime stability I'm dosing Prime to dechlorinate that tap water that I just put in there and stability to add some bacteria to the water and get that biomedial jump start these Chambers look like they're about 20 to 30 gallons so I'm going to dose each accordingly and just let the bottle media marinate and the good stuff with my rough calculations I dosed about a hundred gallons worth of prime and 100 gallons worth of stability it should do for now and today my pumps have finally arrived I'm going with Ecotec Vectra M2 pump I'm going to use two of these on this tank this is a 2 000 gallon our controllable flow pump meaning that it can be adjusted by way of the controller physically or on the Mobius app as well you can use this pump in a closed loop system or just as a return pump it can be plumbed using standard PVC pipe or even the flex hose that I'm using here you've got a one inch output fitting while the input fitting is one and a quarter inch helping to get you to that 2 000 gallons per hour if you need it besides these pumps being super quiet there is one more great feature one of its best features in my opinion is that it is compatible with a battery backup we all know what happens when the power goes out and nobody wants that so we're going to get these two pumps installed into the sump the only bad part is my Sump is already filled with water so I'm going to get a little bit wet oh well not a big deal keep in mind that I'm using two of these pumps to properly circulate the water in this 450 gallon
Testing the Sump
tank we're taking that man by the time this thing fills up it's tank fill up time but because we wanted to fill it up with a very very low flow as to not disturb the sand this thing took absolutely forever and even though I speed this footage up a hundred times faster than what it was it's still extremely long so we're just gonna skip ahead to the full tank that way we can see the sump in action let's go sweat on my brow but the pumps are in the sump and we're about to power it up and check it out for the first time here we go those glow look for any leakage if you see any leaks right here in the front all right closed any minute now so I hear the over I hear it overflowing you hear that drain it's overflowing let's check the sump I hear water coming into the socks and now the sump needs to fill to a level where it will overflow into the baffle chamber well right now I'm looking for leaks making sure everything's dry and I got no spills so this baffle is way too low the pumps are almost out of the water so we're going to add more water well here it comes here it comes from the tank that will overflow into here but this is too low so we've got to add more water our water level is down here that's way too low okay the pumps are running the tank is overflowing so we've got a system of water flow here in the tank but check out the water level in my Sump the next test that I want to do is to test for a power failure when the power goes out and the pumps are no longer sending water to the tank the tank is still going to overflow into the sump so I need to test to see that there's enough space in the sump to handle the water that overflows into them even though the pumps are not sending water back to the tank this is how you prevent flooding your whole house and causing a disaster okay we got a power outage pumps are off and I'm hearing a lot of gurgling in the tank the sump is bottling probably most likely due to a siphon a back sizing happening but as the tank drains I got siphon Stoppers so the tank is going to continue to drain and overflow and the sump is going to fill you just got to make sure it doesn't overflow the sump water level rising in the sump we still got that little backfill going there in the pump and there is some still overflowing into the sun water coming into this baffle is water that's overflowing into the socks and then coming into this baffle so it's still doing it but as we drain and get closer to those siphon Stoppers when the water level drops below them they will break that session but we'll keep an eye on the water level in the sump but I still got plenty of space so this is good check it out no more reverse siphon coming in through these return lines and the reason the water level has dropped enough past the siphon stopper this one here is clearly out of the water already and this one's got just the tips out of the water enough for those little air bubbles to form and air to get in but the real thing we're looking for is the water level in the sump we're up to here and we got this much more space which is plenty that the sump can fill before it overflows so we've got a good level here with the power out and the tank is no longer overflowing no longer backfilling we're good to go we've got a power outage under control that's your whole seamless sump by custom aquariums fully installed from beginning to end what's left to do well you got to check that out in that video right there which is the series finale of the fish cave is born if you made it this far let me know by hitting that like button and I'll see you on the other side [Music]
