Darice Plastic Overflow Box Protector

[sincebeen]

I posted some stuff about darice plastic canvas at the end of this thread . As soon as I got the stuff I knew there would be more uses.

Well, I've always been worried about leaves covering/blocking my overflow box and I've thought about making a screen, but the only material that came to mind was something like window screen, which is obviously something I didn't want to use in the aquarium.

So, with some darice plastic and some zip ties I made this:



Before installation:



I installed it by just setting it on top of the box:



I was about to ask about what paint I could use to paint it black, and then I had another light bulb (or facepalm), and I did a Google search for "Black Darice Plastic" .

Cheers,

 

[anarekist]

wow great idea. hopefully it does not clog quickly.

 

[rbarn]

Prefect. THANK YOU.

I've been wracking my brain for an idea to cover my overflow. If you just put gutter guard or screen over the overflow holes they quickly become clogged, but you're idea of making a 3D box around the overflow opening should make that much harder to block since the screen itself is away from the overflow holes where all the real water acceleration and suction is.

You wont suck anything bigger than those holes out of the tank, but as long as you dont have a bunch of big debris it should work nice.

 

[sincebeen]

I usually only find one or two grass leaves causing a non-flow-effecting blockage every other day. I'm in my man cave often enough anyway, and I just grab the leaves while feeding. My big concern was the one time a large leaf blocked 1/2 of the overflow. Of course it happened while I was sleeping and I walked into my sump room in the morning with the "partially-dry-pump-sucking" sound and fiddled around in the sump for three minutes of nervous chaos before realizing it was a blockage in the overflow.

 

[deeda]

Nice DIY for the overflow!

I also use that product for various DIY projects for the aquarium. Use as a separator for filter media in canisters, attached to lighting grid (egg crate) for aquarium dividers, filling the gaps around filters on glass canopy, emergency lids on small tanks to prevent jumpers from escaping, etc.

It comes in different colors, sizes and mesh sizes to fit most any project in the fish room.

 

[sincebeen]

So after calling four different craft stores to make sure they had it on hand, I found the black plastic canvas. I had to stop at the hardware store for some black 4" zip ties and:



Can't even tell it's there now:

 

[sincebeen]

Nice DIY for the overflow!

Thanks Deeda. I lucked into this stuff from a user recommendation on the Matrix vs Pond thread as a media separator in my wet/dry sump. Turned out to be one of the cheapest useful things for the aquarium.



Sent from my iPad using MonsterAquariaNetwork app

 

[deeda]

I think the black looks much better as it blends in better.