hydro-sponges for rubbermaid bins

[DewDropPony]

I'm in the process of setting up four 50gal rubbermaid bins. I was told I could use a hydro-sponges (or make my own sponges) and filter the bins with that. All I would need to buy, as for real equipment, is the powerheads to run it. Will that work? And how effective would it be? And what size powerheads would I need? I'd think that finding the tubes for a UGF without actually buying the UGF would be hard. I could come up with my own sponge material though.

[jonah]

You can buy pvc at any Home Depot or Lowes, for that matter, they sell the clear rigid tubes at Petsmart.

[nefarious]

yeah, the clear rigid tubes in petsmart are about 65cents a piece.

[Seedy]

J/C-what application will the bins have? Breeding? Grow out?...

[DewDropPony]

Grow out. One is for a 5'' midas/red devil, another is for a 6'' four lined pim, another is for a single 2.5'' GT, and the last one is for GT fry to grow to be 2'' so I can sell them to the LFS.

[Seedy]

Cool!

[abenez]

sounds like a great project ! can you post a few pictures along the way?

[DewDropPony]

I wish I could but I don't have a digital camera. I want one so bad. Anyways, just a up date. I'm scraping the rubbermaid idea and going with something I just heard of last night on a goldfish forums. It's cheaper, easier to make, and the person that I got the idea from said it has never leaked water. http://www.goldfishparadise.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10395

[chc]

Just a tip, the powerheads would not be necessary to run the sponges. A big air pump could run all of the filters at a fraction of the cost of individual power heads. I've used such a setup in the past running over 40 sponges with one $200 pump. Powerheads would have cost much more than that!

There are even bigger pumps for a little more money (and I'm not talking about the big, loud blowers either). I can direct you to a good source if you'd like. Just PM me.