There is a nice tank for sale at a good price but it is drilled and i have no idea how the pipes and pumps work? Is there a way you can just seal the bottom on the tank? It is a acrylic if that matters at all. i litterally have no clue how a drilled tank works... any help would be great!
How do you run a drilled tank!?
- Thread starter cgronko
- Start date
cgronko;2719610; said:
You could just "seal" it if you wanted to (though I would use the holes they are already there).
As for what you do basically you just run plumbing through the holes. One is will be going to your canister or sump. The other will be coming back into the tank. The choice of canister or sump is going to make a big difference on requirements for the intake, but either way I would run a pvc pipe up near the surface for your intake. For the return I would split the flow at least 2 ways.
There are a million ways to do the plumbing, but the key part is just having bulkheads to seal where the hole is. It appears from the picture that bulkheads are already in the tank (or they just stuck some pvc in there for the picture and it not really sealed). If not you can get them online or at some LFS.
Anyway if it is a tank you want for a good price dont let it being drilled scare you away. Ton of info here on different ways to plumb it and lot of people willing to help. Or you could even just put an acrylic plate on top of the two holes to seal it if you really wanted to.
cgronko;2719912; said:
If you are using a canister then basically all that is probably needed for outside the tanks is a few pvc fittings. I say probably only because I am not positive what is already on the tank. I assume you have some size of flexible hose on your canister. Underneath the tank you would need to put a pvc fitting that transitions from the size of the bulkhead coming out of the tank to a "nipple" for your hose to fit on. Depending on the size and where you buy your parts this might require a couple different fittings. You can take off the bulkhead from your tank and take your hose to a hardware store and tell them you need fittings to attach the two. They should be able to help you.
Inside the tanks the simplest way is just attach a pvc pipe to the bulkhead up to about where your water level will be. You can cut slits in the pvc for water to drain into it or let it flow over the top. Or do a 90 degree or even a U fitting at the top of the PVC pipe and it will probably be less noisy. Want to make sure any slits or holes are small enough to keep out fish. Of course make sure there are enough that your canister is not sucking air. Since you using a canister you can really have the intake at any height (or multiple heights) you want and not have to adress any siphoning issues like you would have to with a sump
For the flow back into the tank it is similar. Just use pvc pipe attached to the bulkhead to get the flow to wherever you want it. You can branch it to have multiple jets or just a single jet. Whatever you want to do to get the flow you want. The higher you go and the more bends you have the more it will restrict the flow from your canister though. Can even take a pvc pipe to the top and do a DIY spraybar if you want. In theory you could even just let it flow right out of the bulkhead without any additional plumbing (but then you would have rocks and things that would get into the hose so not a good idea)