My 5 gallon bucket filter/“sump”

[MoshJosh]

So this was going to be a very different thread. . . a build/upgrade thread. . . but things did not go according to plan.

I was going to upgrade my 15 gallon to a 20 gallon, but, despite my “measurements”, I ran into some space issues. Turns out 3 inches of space above your 16 inch tall tanks isn’t a lot of room to work. . .

I was going to make a “pretty” sump, but, I broke one of the tanks I was going to use, then glass shop broke the other. . .

so I tried to make lemonade out of lemons, well more like lemon flavored water, but better than nothing ha ha. But seriously, I had bought a lot of parts and pieces, and wanted to put them to use while giving my fish a little more water volume. So my 5 gallon bucket filter was born.

originally the plan was for this to have a lid, and it sort of worked out, but made it difficult to adjust the skimmer/access the skimmer so I got rid of it. Once the lid was gone I decided I might as well throw a light on and move my macros in (more room for coral).

The design certainly has flaws, the biggest being the bubbles/microbubbles it throws into the tank. A lot of them are from the skimmer and I’m trying to dial it in, but some are just from the fact that water overflows from the filter to the tank. I might try a piece of foam over the return if I can find a way to make it look better than trash.

The other issue is the possibility of overflow. The 20 gallon tank I was going to use an overflow box, but in this set up I’ve just mounted the pump as high up in the tank as possible. I haven’t tested it but realistically most of the water would stay in the tank ha ha

also, egg crate lid until I can order some polycarbonate.

anyway, here are some pictures if you’re interested:

 

[Dolphins18]

Looks cool. Id be worried about the light on the skimmer. That skimmer body is gonna get full of algae fairly fast with fuge light on it.

 

[MoshJosh]

Looks cool. Id be worried about the light on the skimmer. That skimmer body is gonna get full of algae fairly fast with fuge light on it.

Yeah, I mounted of the light as far to the right as possible in hopes of A. getting it directly over the algae and B. keeping it off the skimmer, realistically the skimmer is probably getting less right now then when it was mounted in the tank ha ha. But I realize neither of those situations are ideal. Might just get rid of the skimmer altogether, as it’s throwing tons of bubbles, and not really producing a lot of skinmate, but I’ll give it a little while.

 

[Dolphins18]

Yeah, I mounted of the light as far to the right as possible in hopes of A. getting it directly over the algae and B. keeping it off the skimmer, realistically the skimmer is probably getting less right now then when it was mounted in the tank ha ha. But I realize neither of those situations are ideal. Might just get rid of the skimmer altogether, as it’s throwing tons of bubbles, and not really producing a lot of skinmate, but I’ll give it a little while.

I've never bothered with small skimmers. I run several systems at this point without skimmers. Love em on big tanks but cant be bothered on small systems.