5. planter for flowers/herbs
4. umbrella bin when it rains
3. sell it to someone that keeps FW tanks
2. use it for water circulation on a HT/QT
1. use it as a media reactor
I had an old Fluval 304 on my tank when i first got it. Worked good for what it was, picked up a lot of crap from the water in a sumpless tank. A couple of bits had been broken on it and finally it got to where it just wouldnt work. I cleaned it up and moth balled it. So today im in the LFS that is closest to me and i had to take my son to the bathroom. I never noticed before but they had a bunch of fluval spare parts. My filter needed a new impeller shaft and impeller cover. They had both of the bits and they were like 10 bucks each. I had found the parts online for cheaper but by the time you add in shipping and taxes i came out about the same so i went ahead and got them. Came home and noticed the impeller had wobbled out a bit when i ran the pump with a broken impeller shaft so i took a piece of airline tubing and used it as a bushing to take up the slack. Worked great, quieted down and worked like a charm.
So now i have it fixed and i'm thinking what can i do with it now? Id heard of people using them as media reactors before. Pull the sponges, put carbon and GFO in the trays and let er rip. So thats exactly what i did (save for pull the sponges).I figured it would be good to keep the sponges so they would be colonized with good beneficial bits and bobs in the event i needed to use the can for application #2. Put a small amount of GFO to reduce phosphates in two small filter bags and dropped them in the bottom tray. In the upper two trays i filled them with carbon with some filter pad material below and above the carbon to pull any larger particulate matter out and keep the carbon from clogging prematurely. The only hard part is getting the siphon going since the sump and the filter are on the same level. The tanks are technically supposed to be above the filter to get the siphon going and make it less hard to move the water back up the column. Well, so far so good.. im going to do a water change tomorrow and see how much of the garbage the extra filter material pulls out.
I have a two little fishies media reactor that worked just fine, but i think i am going to make a poor mans bio de-nitrator out of it. Its sad when i tested my nitrates today and i was happy to see between 50 and 25 on the scale. We'll see how it goes.
