Cecil,
Are you thinking of using these tanks for your basement system? I know in the article that it looked like you have vertical barrels. I am designing a tank system in the house we are building so I can keep fish inside over winter and am collecting more ideas.
Yes the tanks are for the basement system. I have two 300 gallon stock tanks up and running now. They are not vertical barrels. The barrels are the clarifiers. I also have a separate 180 gallon tank tied in that holds the RBC. Keeping the RBC in the same tank as the fish among other disadvantages collected debris which made it less efficient.
In retrospect I would suggest probably a barrel and utube siphon as a clarifer, but go with a trickle filter as your biofilter, and it also works concurrently as an aerator and blows off CO2. Trust me the RBC's are good but a PITA to build. Not as cheap to build as a trickle filter either. You just pump the water to the top of the trickle filter that is suspended from your ceiling after the clarifier and let it drop back into your tank.
The trickle tube can be made from five gallon buckets hooked together in series with screens in the bottom of each one. Menards sells smaller buckets if your load isn't to high. You want to make plates with evenly spaced holes on to top of each bucket to make sure the water spreads out for more contact time though.
