# Progress Report: 90g In-Progress



## Threnjen (Jan 10, 2013)

Hubby and I are working on our 90g (some of you may have noticed a lot of questions lately). This is our first tank and we have never kept fish. We are bound and determined to do it all correctly and are trying to go above and beyond with all the little details, so we have been at this for... months (well to be fair we also stopped and decided to move to a new house).

First is our sump, we are pretty proud of this. Obviously I did a lot of research before designing this.








You can read more about our sump setup in this thread where I got some good feedback about it. One of the things I have changed is to add Seachem Matrix under the balls, and also there is just a big sponge in there in the midst of the balls. I was hoping to raise the balls out of the water a bit but, it just didn't happen. Oh well. In any case, I'm hoping there is such a massive amount of stuff for bio filtration that eventually I can take out the balls (since I hear bad things about them in the long term)







I've also added Matrix in the empty voids at the back corners of the sump. I'm not sure if they get enough flow there, but there are airstones under the entire bio ball box, so I'm hoping they get the benefit of some movement from that.

We have the sump hooked up to itself, by way of the outlet pump running right into the overflow box up on the main tank. So as you can see it is full and running, and cycling (the cloudy water is a good sign I hope!)


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## Threnjen (Jan 10, 2013)

Another project is our under gravel jets.










I've been trying to keep an eye toward items being "removable" easily (for example the whole sump can be slid out and the entire structure of bio balls be brought up, they are in a basket). So I've set up the pump with a connector so that if I need to clean or replace the pump, it is very easy to unscrew.










I also put marine epoxy on all of my jets and squished substrate on to them. I'm not sure it's going to work, but it should help. I plugged the jets with silicone wax while I do this so I don't get any substrate inside.









I'm hoping this will really hide the jets when they are running!

Unfortunately, I did not order enough substrate  We want quite a few plants and I am aiming for 2-2.5" in front, going up to 3.5" in back. I was nowhere close. But we did put the wood in and will fill around it with the substrate so it is well seated.









I hope you enjoy our in-progress so far


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## choutman (Mar 6, 2012)

that is REALLY cool I like how you all are doing your filtration I actually learned from this thread lol thanks!


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Cool pics. Interested in your undergravel jetting. How will you keep from shooting stuff everywhere?


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## Threnjen (Jan 10, 2013)

Ha, well, I'm the noob so I can't give you a definitive answer from experience, only an answer from my "theorycrafting"

Stuff do you mean - substrate or gunk?

So from my reading and not from experience:
the jet openings are above the substrate and they are not running parallel, they are at about a 45 degree angle, which might even be too high ... So they should not disturb the actual substrate. (hypothetically) If they do there could end up being low substrate points I suppose.

As far as shooting around gunk, this is as intended. The intake of the jets system is there at the back of the tank and the prefilter there is supposed to capture some of the gunk that might otherwise settle on the bottom. The currents are also supposed to help the gunk get up near the overflow, since a FW tank doesn't have the currents of a SW tank and we want to make sure the nasty stuff gets into the filtration system. Anyway keeping the gunk off the bottom is a big focus of the undergravel jet system as far as I understand. It's supposed to help a lot with keeping things clean and reducing vacuuming.

Now all that said, we'll see what it actually does in practice. Worst case scenario I need to get some doohicky to dial back the power from the pump, if the jets are too crazy, but they shouldn't be. Worst worst case scenario it totally sucks and I built it all wrong and it doesn't get used.


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## Raymond S. (Jan 11, 2013)

You are obviously going "beyond the call" and I can't wait to see it up and running. Those "jets" may or may not be hard to
get close to but not over "enough". If too much, you can always reduce the size of the pump. The filter for it will need to
be watched rather closely. Don't know how close we are talking but my brother has a two tier pond in his yard so he has
years of experience/w water pumps. Right quick he will tell you that choking them shortens their life span. They often have
a valve which turns down the flow. But it does this by restricting the size of the flow tube. He said same brand/size pumps
will last twice as long NOT turned down. Like I said, not knowing how close this is to what you have, but possibly being
important info on them. Point being the filter needs to be cleaned often to prevent this...I believe.
It's been years between my first tanks and what I have now so the thought of a sump for a freshwater tank was absent
for all that time. But lately it's been back/w me. Simply meaning...I'm watching you closely...LOL...


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## Threnjen (Jan 10, 2013)

I just loved the idea of a sump to get more water into our system!

We actually just got the entire tank filled tonight and running, so I need to add some new pictures.

I still need more substrate... I was impatient.

The undergravel jets seem to be ok - not too little, not too much (of course I won't know this for sure until there are fish navigating it). The pump is so much noisier than I expected though  Noisiest part of the whole setup...


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