Well, I'm getting close to ready to fire up this sump I got from Bigman. I toyed with the idea of petitioning it off into three chambers instead of two but instead I had a brainstorm...I'm gonna take a 1/2 gallon drink pitcher(or maybe a gallon), drill holes in it started about 4 inches up and put some sand in the bottom along with some rubble and a mangrove shoot or three and some cheato. This way if for any reason I want to take it out I can. I know it's only a half gallon container, but remember it will be sitting in about 20 gallons of water in the sump with water able to freely flow through it. If any of you have any thoughts I would love to hear them. My other project is a DIY kalk drip. I am going to start dosing Mrs Wages Pickling Lime (calcium hydroxide), one teaspoon to a gallon of top off water, dripped over the course of about 2 days. Hopefully this will keep my ph from spiking seeing as how the calcium hydroxide has a ph of 12. If my Alk drops I'm going to dose with baking soda....baked in the oven on a cookie sheet for one hour at 300 deg so as to convert it from bicarbonate to carbonate. The doser is nothing more than a gallon size tea pitcher with airline tubing used as a siphon with an airline control valve on the end so i can set the drip. I hope this will make my coraline algae go crazy. I'm also gonna be making a super sucking siphon to get the water from the tank to the sump. I will take pics and post in the DIY so anyone who wants to can follow along.
