Wow, that's awesome!!

 

OMG if I had that dude I would freak out man that's so nice hope it works out

 

I'm a little worried about my overflow holes, since I only have 3 small ones per partition :/ Hopefully its enough flow.

 

Woah I'd love to see your progress! This looks amazing.

 

Yea love threads like this that shows weekly, etc. progress of how the final product comes out! Keep this thread going for future updates!

Thanks for sharing with the community, looks awesome!

 

Update:

Here's the MDF that I will be using to put the sump and barracks on. Spraypainted Satin White with a Clear Coating on both sides for waterproofing. It's drying right now

This is the sump that we are working on. It's made out of 1/4" thick acrylic. It's being made out of scrap pieces, and we bought wayyy too much but the total cost of all the plastic for the sump was $30. And we have a lot of left overs to make fish tanks with : ) (like 5-6 5 gallons)

This is the compartment divider for the K1-Media. Letting the silicone around the mesh dry a bit before gluing the pieces together.

 

Amazing! I can't wait to see it when it's all finished.

 

Here's the sump, mostly finished. The two egg crates will have algae scrubs draped over them. Middle compartment is for K1 and the two small compartments on the right are for mechanical filtration. (It's flipped on its side cause it's drying right now~

Ran into some major problems while using scrap pieces (can't ask for perfect when you ask for cheap stuff I guess :/) The pieces weren't exactly 90 degree angles since I was too lazy to recut all of them, meaning there's a decent sized gap on the outside wall

And here's my fix to it. *Crossing my fingers that it will not leak. Considering the sump is very low, water pressure shouldn't be a problem. And I filled the gap with Weld-on for now, and will cover again with silicone.

 

Looking good!

 

If I were you , I would not be able to control my self. I had 2 bettas. Then I built betta barracks, I had lots of room in case I got more bettas. Then I immediately filled all the openings with new bettas

 

Man... my barracks aren't even finished yet and I have enough to fill up one.... Now that I'm building my first barracks I went overboard and "prepared" enough Betta for almost 2 barracks _._ I never believed people when they said Betta could be an addiction lol, now I certainly do!

Looks great. My only advice is to be extremely careful with quarantine and sick fish... One sick fish goes in the system and all of them are exposed and potentially ill.

Yes I thought of that too. I was trying to think of a way to add a "medical filter" in the sump that will kill parasites/bacteria before the water returns to each condo, and have an activated carbon before that to take all the medicine out of the water. I doubt that's possible though considering most bacteria/parasites are pretty hardy :/

I've gotten into the habit of QT'ing all new fish for 2 weeks at least. I learned my lesson when a dozen of my Betta got sick with Ick : (

 

Looks great. My only advice is to be extremely careful with quarantine and sick fish... One sick fish goes in the system and all of them are exposed and potentially ill.

 

Ready for water test. Cat in position!

Mechanical filter overflow

So there was quite a big leak on the bottom where two scrap pieces connected horizontally. (You can see the water marks on the cardboard) I forgot to put a safety piece on top of that one since its so thin :/ I'm going to attempt fixing it with a crap load of silicone.

Luckily that's the only leak and should be an easy fix. Hopefully I'll have the entire system connected tomorrow!

 

So we finally managed to fix all the leaks. We connected the system and did a full run for the first time today and I'm really happy about the results! There are a couple unglued joints that are leaking since we're still tweaking it, but I think we're ready to go ahead and build the second barracks and connect it all together!

Here are some pictures:

You can see the overflow waterlevel if you look close enough. It seems to be staying constant.

Here's how the overflow works.

One thing we noticed is that the waterlevel in the barracks actually goes to the top of the outflow holes, meaning that right now I only have 1/4" between the water level and the top of the barracks. I'm probably going to have to add lids to these barracks to keep the Betta from jumping out. (Breathing won't be a problem since the water will be aerated from the K1 compartment). We're still missing some components for the filter (like the air stones for K1, algae scrubbers, and some stuff from the bio filter). They're arriving Friday I believe.

Another thing we noticed is that some of the compartments seem to be getting a little less water flow than the others o.o. I think it depends on how far we pushed the tubing into the pvc pipe so we'll have to adjust that too.

Any suggestions on the whole thing?

 

Wait so below is a HUGE Filter of some sort? or does it clean the tanks without you having too? This is Amazing BTW =U

 

It's a sump, and yes it's basically a giant filter. I have different sizes of sponge, bio-media (non-fluidized and fluidized) in right now. The fluidized K1 takes aeration, so the water will be aerated as well. I'm looking to add in algae scrubbers at the back if possible, since they take out a ton of nitrates. Still have to do water changes even with this filter, just not as frequently~

 

How big are each compartments?

 

The compartments in the barracks are 4" x 9.5" x 6", so about a gallon water per fish. Not sure how big the sump is since I made it out of scrap o.o. It's about 8" tall and 12" wide.

 

You can look into adding UV sterilization- it kills the vast majority of pathogens on contact, but there is no guarantee it will stop the spread of disease because in the end the fish are still sharing the same water. It may help slow or prevent it, though.

 

Good idea! It sounds pricey though o.o. I'll see if it's going to be cost-effective and maybe find some space to implement it. Though considering it's UV, it would need to be a UV proof compartment? I used to work with UV in an engineering workshop, and the safety regulations are ridiculous :/

The stand is about 80$ made from the cheapest 2x4 wood from Ace (it will hold 4 x 20G, 6x 10G, 2x 24 compartment 1G each barracks, the sump, and space at the top for random stuff), and the barracks cost about $100. The $100 was cause I was inexperienced with how plexiglass is sold. For the next barracks I'm going to work out something with scrap + half sheet prices to try and cut the price down a lot. A lot of the money went into buying tools (a good drill and drill bits, clamps, screws (tons of screws!) etc.) I would've preferred something to sand/cut the plexiglass myself but mehhh. Airline and PVC piping is pretty cheap, the stop valves and connections are a bit more pricey, about $15 in total right now. The material for the sump was actually really cheap, about $5 since I made it out of scrap. After I'm done I'll do a quick price break down if I find the time for it.

 

It looks like your starting a petshop!

 

You must have spent a fortune!

 

good job

r

 

I'm impressed. A lot of thought and labor went into that. Just excellent.

 

So I'm looking at a Sunsun 13W UV Sterilizer right now, seems like the price is ok. It's 40$ and comes with a replacement bulb. Only problem is that it's 12 inches high and the space for my sump is exactly 12" tall. I'm going to order it and see if I can fit it in the system somehow. It has an in-built pump so I could add separate reservoir which is awesome. Maybe I'll manage to stick one of the 10 gallons down there somehow >.<!

It seems to be able to treat parasites at least. I've had an ich nightmare before so I think the 40$ is well spent. Thanks for the suggestion!

*Edit: Hmm seems like there's no way to slow down the flow rate of this UV pump. It's an inbuilt 211 GPH pump >.> I wonder if I can stuff the intake a little to slow it down? Any ideas? If worse comes to worse i'll just introduce a little headheight to it or exchange the pumping unit I guess.

 

Great setup! If I may ask how wide is your plexiglass?

 

I'm using 1/8" thick plexiglass (extruded). Each of the dividers acts like a brace so there's no worry about bowing.

Working on my second set of barracks now so, hopefully they'll be ready this weekend. So busy with finals and all : (