Should I fear the wet dry?

Bob-O

Do not fear the wet-dry, I did for all these years, and man do I feel the fool! Both my 220 and my 150 are running off of a ProClear 300 with a Quiet One pump - 980 GPH on the 220 (Quiet One 4000) and a 780 GPH (Quiet One 3000) on the 150, I spent the money, but sold all of my Emp 400 HOB's and 3 Eheihm Pros and paid for the whole dealio~ I made some adjustments:

Repair (Dr.SteveO) came up/over from Indy, and we drilled a 2" Emergency Overflow in each wet-dry. You see my Sump Pit is 3' from the 220 and about 10' from the 150, so I ran a 10' section of 2" PVC along the floor behind the tanks, that runs into the sump, now should the power fail, the worst it will do is backflow up to the "Emergency Valve" (That we drilled in the wet-dry) and drain into my sump (Which has a Battery Backup) Now the other thing we did was, we (Repair) drilled a Vacuum Breaker hole on the return, so If the power fails and the sump is getting the backflow from the tank, once the suction is broken, the flow stops, and I do not lose the suction from my HOB Overflows, so as soon as the power returns, game on, like it never was off, I lose MAYBE 5 gallons a tank, easy refill. A double Failsafe if you will...

Repair and DragonKeeper were invalueable to teaching me the game and I feel so comfortable, that Im cleaning my pads, sponges and HOB Overflows a couple of time a week.......

Plus my electrical consumption per tank for filtration went from about 37 bucks (Thats per freaking tank!) a month to 4. That ends up saving me a whopping 66 bucks a month in electrical using DragonKeepers consumption guide from ComEd. Not to mention I have TONS better filtration, and can stock the shit out of my big tanks........I may get out of the doghouse some time by christmas! (MAYBE!)

I have been in this game 27 years now (Running and maintaining) my own tanks, and man is it a (Insert Deleted Word Here) to learn such a valuable lesson, that I fought for years because I was afraid......Listen to Shawn, Listen to Jack, they speak the truth!

www.pro-clear.com/wetdry.html

End Game~

DON'T FEAR THE WET-DRY MAN!!! YOU WILL NOT REGRET THE CHANGE!!!

Now I am considering a drip system and a Planted Refuigum prefilter......What a freaking difference! Also the sumps have already served as emergency hospital tanks and worked like a charm!!



Thank you to Repair and DragonKeeper! Repair has been trying for years to get me into a wet-dry! THANK YOU!!!!!!

Nuthman~

I lost many fish in the first 6 mos of running my wet dry in my 95g. 

Adding sponge filters to the tank seemed to fix this.  I have since stopped running the wet-dry and am mainly running sponge after wet dry leaked a bit.  With fish doing very well, I don't want to screw anything up.

Over flow box can be noisy too. 

It seems though that others have had better experiences with wet dry.

Go with a sump and a wet/dry.  I set up a 75 gallon tank underneath my 125 and use it as a grow out as well.  It's awesome.

Never fear the sump my friend. Before you go and get one check out the big forums on the net and learn as much as you can. The one that I installed on Nuth's 150 is almost fool proof. As long as you know the downfalls (faults) you can easily prepare for them.

I just got done installing a sump on the 125 that I am building a stand for and I wonder why it took so long for me to get into this equipment. Sumps are far better at bio filtration and can be rigged to do a damn good mechanical filtration job.

This will get you through the basics:
reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-01/gt/index.php

Cichlid-Forum is also a great place for research. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Keeper

Anyone?

Nuth just recently set up a sump system on his 210, he should have some suggestions.

I would like to install a wet/dry filter on my 210.  However,  since it is not drilled,  i would need to do the overflow boxes.  I have never used any type of sump set-up before and have heard all the horror stories.  Power outtages,  clogged returns,  destroyed carpets etc.

My main reason for this is to reduce the number of filters on the tank thus reducing the "inside mess".  Plus,  a good sump and the FX5 will easily do the job,  freeing up the other filters for the booming tank explosion over here.

What do you guys think?