Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have an idea but dont quite know how to go about doing it. I have a viv. setup with a small pool of water at one end. Lets say its about 1-2" deep. What I want to do is have a hose that takes water in to fill the pond and another that takes the water out. These hoses will run to a sump that is made out of a 10 gallon aquarium. There will be 2 fully submersible pumps....one connected to the fill hose and the other connected to the drain hose. I am planning on running a regular fish filter in the sump so that the water that returns to my pond will be filtered. I dont know if there is a more efficient way of doing this or if it will even work, but it was my brain fart for the day. Any input is much appreciated.

Actually, you'll only need one pump and two water lines. Drill two holes in the bottom of your tub in the viv and get a couple pvc bulkheads (choose what size hole you want for this). One hole will be to take water to your 10 gallon tank and one will be to return the water to your tub(from the water pump).

Then you need to pipe the retun hole to the 10 gallon tank. For this just use regular pvc pipe and let it fall into the tank.

For the return pipe to the viv tub you need to do something a little different. This will actually return to the viv, but ALSO have another pipe coming out of it so you can empty some water. Pipe a straight line to the aquarium where your pump will sit, but put a 'T' connector somewhere along it. From one side(straight down) of the T will be to the pump, from the second side(straight up)your viv, and the third side(horizontal/sideways) will go to a ball valve. A ball valve is basically a way to cut the water flow in the pipe. So you leave the ball valve closed when you are running everything and if you want to empty some water, just open the ball valve and the water from the return will go out the side tube into a bucket you can hold under the opening.

Sorry for the long explanation. If this doesn't make sense just go to a Reef keeping website (www.reefcentral.com) and do a search on plumbing, refugiums, or sumps. What you are trying to do is nearly identical to this process.

Alright let me see if I understand what you are telling me. Im more of a visual person so I tried to sketch it while I was reading it. There will be two holes. One hole has a piece of pvc connected to it and runs down to my 10 gallon aquarium. The other hole has a piece of pvc but somewhere down the line it has a t connector. The pipe goes from the t connector to the pump and another pipe goes to a ball valve? But both pipes lead to my 10g aquarium. Here is where I start to have questions. Why do I need to have the ball valve...you said to empty water but if I already have the one pipe running from the aquarium to empty then why to I need one on the return pipe? If I have a pipe that is evacuating my water by just letting it flow out wont the rate at which it drains be faster than the rate at which it fills or in essence should it even out so that the water in the pond is always at the same height. Thank you soooo much for your help. I tried to go to reefcentral.com like you suggested but I couldnt figure out how to navigate my way through that site to find what I was looking for.

I dont really know where that guy was goin with the ball valve, but I have an idea that might be similar. In the photo below, you cut a hole in the bottom of your pool, and insert a piece of pvc pipe, you may want to screen cover it if you have a snake in the tank, make the pipe (1) stick up as high as you want your water level to be, this will act as an overflow. if you cant go straight down under the pool, you can run it out the side of the pool, just make sure the bottom of the pipe is how high you want your water level to be. As for filtration, you could put some dividers in the sump and fill them with various filter media which would filter the water as the water passes thru it to the submersible pump (2) which returns the water via some flexible tubing or something, you could disguise the return line if you want a more natural look.

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Thats perfect. Thats pretty much exactly what I was after I just couldnt figure out how I wanted it done. Much easier than using two pumps...one for intake and one for exhaust and it maintains the exact waterlevel. Thank you both so much for your help!