Wet dry with sep. sump?

HI, I recently rented a home in Fla that has an aquarium in the wall. It appears to be a 75 gallon with a wet dry type of filtration system wich is hidden underneath. It has two parts. One looks like a 75 gallon pro series wet/dry -

http://www.proclearaquaticsystems.com/images/wetdry/PRO_075_207510.jpg

The other side looks like another wet dry(without the skimmer) along with a pump inside that shoots the water back up thru the overflow (discharge tube). I'm assuming it was set up as a salt water aquarium at one time. Would this type of set up be good for fresh water also? Plus, with pvc pipe above both boxes, how do you change out the blue filter media? There's a new one on the outside and if I decide to tackle this, I want to know about the up keep. There were no instruction booklets. The last time I kept an aquarium was in the early 80's. A 55gal with a couple of power filters is what im accustomed too. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Dom

 

Hi Dom1 and welcome to our group!

That's pretty cool to rent a home that has a built in tank. I know you will have fun with it.

I'll leave your question up to the experts here as I am new to the hobby, but I just wanted to say WELCOME!

Cindy ;D

 

It would seem you have several options, saltwater...or nice planted freshwater, discus...??, angels...hmmmmm lots of choices...

Could you post pics of the setup and perhaps someone here would be able to help you with the equipment ;D

How exciting! A new tank!!!! Welcome, BTW ;D

 

Oh yeah, someone here gave me this link...

http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/volume

and now I pass it to you....it will help you figure the exact volumes of the tanks, sumps, etc...you will need that. Measure the inside dimensions to get accurate results :

 

Ok, here's some pictures, I filled it up last night, no leaks. the filter, pump, etc appear to be working fine. From the pics, am i going to have to remove the pvc pipe to get to the blue filter media?

 

Here's the other. There's also a uv sterilizer hooked up underneath the tank and has a water tube going thru it. Seems like a pretty expensive set up.

 

Man, that looks like a tight setup!

I can't imagine someone would make a prefilter media area so that you cannot access it easily.....but it looks like the PVC is glued....I'm sure you probably tried pulling just the PVC going into the top to see if it pops right out? then maybe you could squeak that tray out???

I'm sure someone a with a lot more knowledge than me will come along here.....

 

Yeah, thought there would be some kind of trick to it. But it won't come apart. Not sure if I want it to, I imagine that they're full of water.

 

Looks to me as though you could remove that bottle and pull the wet/dry forward and this will allow the lid on top to be out of the way of the pipe and allow you to open it. Is that a possibility?

Also you just want to be able to replace the blue floss/pad on top and not mess with the balls.

 

either side of the filters cannot be moved. They're connected by yet another hose? type fitting on the the bottom of both boxes. Water flows from one box to the other. So they can't be moved left or right. They're in pretty tight between the walls also. Just enough space for the extra filter media. I don't want to force anything, in terms of the pvc pipe.. since it isn't mine, and I don't want a flood. lol. But it would be nice to know. Would more pics help?