[dsmalex97]

If i want to make a wet/dry sump for my 125 gallon, what is a good size pump to get?

 

[Oldman]

Welcome to the forum Dsmalex.
Minimum pump for a tank that size would be about 400 GPH. That would be enough to get good biofiltration and chemical filtration going but not enough for much mechanical filtration. If you expect your filter to give you aggressive mechanical filtration, you will want at least 1000 GPH.

 

[dsmalex97]

awesome, I found a 1200gph on craigslist for like 40 bucks so thats probably what I'm going to use. Its for my red ear slider tank actually so the filtration has to be imacculate. I was going to buy a filter until I saw the price of a Fluval, and I thats when I started researching wet/dry's. They seem like they work better, and are far more powerful and provide wayyy better filtration. I also want to have 2 stages of filtration, what are the best mediums? I see people using those dish scrubbies, but I wanted to have charcoal or something just trying to figure out what would be best in this application. Any help would be GREAT!

 

[MediaHound]

Now that you got a pump, no need to really talk about that.. but one thing I would like to mention is that one thing a wet dry is great for that a lot of people dont even realize -
you can get a filter sock and hanger for it, and put it in your sump. Then take your gravel cleaner and siphon out your gravel with it, but drain it right into that sock. Pinch the tubing to adjust the flow, instead of putting your thumb on the end of it in a trash can (as you cant really reach inside the sock to thumb the end). All the particles get trapped, those that don't will settle back down anyway. Hope that makes some sort of sense. This is really good to spot clean dirty spots and keep nitrates down etc. Especially with turtles!