I live in Burley, but I am currently in Woodland Hills Utah. I want to run from the bottom so I can get the tank clean easily. I also hope to have enough lighting for a duck weed cover. I don't know if it is possible to grow it fast enough to keep up with tropheus and pseudotropheus, but that would be my goal.
Rivermud, can you go into the details of where you put each bulckhead and why. I am trying to get my head around how your sytem works but I am not sure. Are there only 2 bulkheads? Are the upper pieces coming through the tank or are they just to hold the piping. Is that why the clamp is on? Which bulkhead do I buy to attach pvc?
Okay, thats a lot of questions in a short paragraph... let's see how to start...
The system works like any other overflow, the top of the overflow determines the water height. I have 2 other lines with ball valves on them to open or close for a 30% water change or near 100%. I chose not to put my bulkheads on the bottom of the tank for many reasons: Screening out substrate, transporting or moving the tank would be very difficult, interferes with decor, near impossible to work on if it failed as one hand needs to be in the tank and the other outside the tank to turn the bulkhead.... literally loads of reasons I chose the back bottom of the tank rather than the bottom.
If you look at the drawing above, the bulkheads are at the bottom corners of the image (the drop down half circle part). From there the water flows up to the top of the pipe where I've set my water depth. the water then flows horizontally to the center pipe and down to the sump. the next pipe down from the top is my 30% water change valve and the one below that is my full drain valve (well near full drain). I've rebuilt the design since I originally made it with larger pipe as my flow wasn't where I wanted it, I had a bottleneck at my bulkheads... I was running 3/8's due to trying to use untested bulkheads. I now have 1" bulkheads going to 1" pipe that in turn goes to a 1.5" downpipe. Speaking of the downpipe.. there is more to it still..
The picture above shows the plumbing down to the sump on the center downpipe. I have added 2 ball valves, one to the sump and one to the drain or hose line. If i close the sump valve and open the drain valve the water gets set out through a hose I have attached to it. I can also use this same setup to fill the tank back up. So, basically once a week I turn the water pump off, close the valve to the sump, open the valve to the hose, then open the 30% valve. Within a minute or two I have completed my 30% drain. At this point I hook my line up to my treated water barrel and open the spigot to refill.
The clamp you see was put there to hold the overflow in place because I had used flexible pvc to attach the overflow to my bulkhead and it would sag. I added the weird wooden peice you can see in the picture to help support the overflow but it hadn't fully cured at the time of the photo so I left the clamp on. the other clamp was to hold the hose in place. The pvc you see going to the tank is actually just spacers i installed for the same reason.. the flexible pvc was just a bear and the bulkhead was a pain. They aren't necessary if you build it with a proper bulkhead and use good schedule 40 pvc.
Hopefully that answered your questions. Feel free to ask more if I didn't explain something well enough.. i have a bad habit of typing as if people know what i am talking about.
