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This may seem a little ridiculous, but I was wondering if it was possible to use an Eheim 2217 to filter both a 55 gallon AND a 10 gallon tank by splitting the intake and return hoses and using two spray bars/intake tubes. the secondary hoses to the ten gallon would have to be about 10 feet long with a three foot rise, whereas the existing hoses to the 55 are right under the tank. Would the 2217 have enough power to move the water?

I would also like to know if using a powerhead to boost the flow a little on the long runs of hoses is a viable solution or if this would ruin the pump in the 2217?

Thank you.

P.S. I thought that I would add that the 55 also has an Emperor 400 HOB, and the 10 has an Eheim Aquaball 2208. Also the 10 has an Eheim Liberty 150 which I would like to remove due to extreme noise. I write this because I would like to know if this idea would still provide adequate filtration for Pl*cos. Sorry for the long post.

Yeah, I realized after making the post how illogical that would be, I thought I might be able to limit the flow to the smaller tank, but I would NOT want to ruin the expensive 2217 by doing this, I suppose if the tanks were closer in size it would have been feasible.

Thank you Barbie for the reply, I'll probably just pull out an old powerhead and use a sponge filter.

I wonder if anyone else has had the problem with noise from an Eheim Liberty, It's a LOT louder than my Emperor 400, and those are said to be loud. I guess if you want an Eheim it is better to get a canister.

There are a lot of small internal power-filter available for about US$30-40 (less than 20 UK pounds) or so that would suit your tank perfectly.

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Mats

I've thought about it, too. I went to a LFS and asked them what they did. There are modules(I think Lifeguard and a few others make them for home use) that can be expanded with the number of tanks you have. You can add heater modules, UV modules, chemical modules, etc. There's a good bit of "hard" plumbing involved. If you don't use an overflow system with each tank, you need to drill the tanks. There's also the problem of disease. If one tank gets an illness, they all get the illness. Keeping different types of water can also be a bit tricky. This LFS had a number of tanks off to the side, completely unattached to the system for quarantine.

I read about a Killifish breeder in Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine who did this at home on a smaller scale. All the species required the same type of water. The tanks were all 2.5-5 gallons. It was a DIY system with components from the hardware store. A lot of work and quite a bit of engineering! He did a wonderful job. I'd like to find the article again so I can appropriately cite the gentleman.

With proper care and thought, it can be achieved, and as Bronzefry says, this is what the shops and wholesalers do.

However, the economy of scale when you have 30-40 tanks is much different from having a couple or half a dozen tanks.

Anytime you connect more than one tank to a pump system, as Barbie points out, you need to have a way of regulating how much water comes out of and goes into a tank. You don't want to overflow the tank, and you want to make sure you don't EMPTY any particular tank either (by pumping out more than what goes in). The easy way to solve this is one way or another of "overflow system". As long as the filter/pump system is designed for this purpose, the overflow can be arranged via a pump in each tank in a sealed corner canister[1] or self-drain[2].

Different water chemistry in the different tanks is also an important issue. In shops, they usually have banks of a few (4-12 or so) tanks that are connected together, some even have bigger tanks with dividers, so commonly shared water within the tank, but dividers to keep the fish separated.

Getting contamination between tanks is certainly one consideration.

Notes:
1: "Sealed corner canister" would be a suitable shape to go into a corner (triangular or similar) and contain a pump that doesn't mind running dry once in a while (if too litle water is coming in). With this pump, you pump out the water to "some other place", where it gets filtered. Advantage here is the lack of drilling holes in the tank, with the drawback of relying on electric pump to get the water out. If the pump fails when you're not watching, you could pump more water into the tank than will fit in it...

2: Self-drain. A pipe that sticks up to the "top water level", which acts as an overflow. This is drilled through the side/bottom of the tank and drains into a common pipe that goes to filtration. Advantage is no electrics in the tank, and thus less risk of failure and accidental overflow. Drawback is of course the drilling of a hole in the tank.

I haven't tried any of these, but I've seen the "behind the scenes" in the odd fish-shop, and I have some ideas about how plumbing, water dynamics and filtration works.

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Mats