Recently I decided to construct a Wet/dry Sump for my 150 gallon African cichlid tank. I Know this is not a reef tank but I know lots of people use sumps here I figured I would share some of my ideas.
Anyways, I was planning to just do a sump using acrylic as most people do until I started looking at prices for acrylic sheets so I started exploring other options. I found Polypropylene sheets to be significantly cheaper. I also is much stronger and durable than acrylic which is also a plus.
The problem with Polypropylene is that it is not easy to bond together like acrylic. It is a thermal plastics which means that you need to use a plastic welder to join pieces together.
So I ended up using 3/8" thick Polypropylene to make a 36"x13"x18" wet/dry sump with 2 10"x10" compartments for bio balls. This gives me about approximately 10 gallons of bio balls. I know this may seem like overkill for freshwater, but I plan to keep about 50-60 fish in this tank so I wanted to oversize it.
Anyways, here are some pictures of the finished product. Like I said I would never use acrylic again after using this. Its also much easier to work with, no need to worry about perfectly routed edges to bond together.
Anyways, if anyone is interested in this type of thing, just shoot me a PM.
Anyways, I was planning to just do a sump using acrylic as most people do until I started looking at prices for acrylic sheets so I started exploring other options. I found Polypropylene sheets to be significantly cheaper. I also is much stronger and durable than acrylic which is also a plus.
The problem with Polypropylene is that it is not easy to bond together like acrylic. It is a thermal plastics which means that you need to use a plastic welder to join pieces together.
So I ended up using 3/8" thick Polypropylene to make a 36"x13"x18" wet/dry sump with 2 10"x10" compartments for bio balls. This gives me about approximately 10 gallons of bio balls. I know this may seem like overkill for freshwater, but I plan to keep about 50-60 fish in this tank so I wanted to oversize it.
Anyways, here are some pictures of the finished product. Like I said I would never use acrylic again after using this. Its also much easier to work with, no need to worry about perfectly routed edges to bond together.
Anyways, if anyone is interested in this type of thing, just shoot me a PM.
