need to filter mutiple tanks

I am planning to open a LFS. There are not any stores in my area and love the business. I have cheched out other store setups and most of them are very complicated. I am trying to open a store with cheep prices and to let people know that you don't need to spend an arm and a leg to have saltwater fish. all of my tanks are cheep petsmart glass tanks with storage container sumps $30 to make. As the LFS's $150 sump.
I have some Ideas on filtering mass tanks but wanted some ideas from everyone here.

Thanks
Howie

 

Well, the LFS here has an awesome setup. He has overflows in each tank (1 inch i believe) and they are all along one wall. They all flow into a 4" pipe that runs behind each row of tanks (the rows are one above the other - 3 rows high) to the end of the row and down into a 200g sump. He has a single pump that pumps back up the same way to all the tanks.

 

Thanks
That is the idea I am going for/ Just putting a large trickle filter in the sump useing bio balls / that is what I use now

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We are a bunch of hill billies in so il. So there is some pretty ghetto setups but they do seem to work. One lfs has a cattle trouf that probably holds 500 gal or so and they have it seperated off with some home made plastic shelds. I have no clue what type of pump they are using but it feeds something of the nature of 35 to 50 10 to 20 gal tanks. This is a fresh water setup but am sure salt wouldn't be far off from this. Would just have to get one major skimmer or a bunch of little ones. good luck and pics will be nice when you set it up

 

where are you from/building the LFS i have seen the setup at that fish place and they use shipping containers and they have one or two 265 as reservoirs and sumps i hear that rubbermaid container or anything of that nature become very brittle over time and have cracked

 

A massive bio-ball tower would work well with a fish only system. Something like a 1 and 1/2 foot diameter pvc pipe, about six feet tall. One of my LFS's has something like that. I think it's a pretty good idea, especially if space and money is an issue.

 

I'd do one of the large heavy plastic watering troth's like from tractor supply company, can do a fuge, bio, mechanical and skimming all in one of those and they are WAY cheaper than a glass tank, I'm about to buy a bunch of them small ones for frag grow out setups the only downfall to this is if you have a parasite breakout or anything like that in one tank all your stock will be effected, also make sure you have backup equipment installed, I.E. have 2 pumps running the return, if one fails your still up and running.

 

I had it good. One of the store owners actually owned the strip mall. Otherwise we would never have gotten away with this. We dug two 6 foot deep pits that each held about a 1000 gallons. I modded an MRC skimmer (which became to be known as the Poopmaster 5000). It was about 5 foot tall and man you wanted to throw up when you cleaned that thing.

Howie, make sure you remember to vent the drains so that you have good flow.