were to drill tank for overflows?

[sharp tooth]

im getting my new tank in a weeks time. i was going to drill the tank my self but the guy building it has said he will drill it for fre if i want him to. allthough drilling acrylic is easy ill get him to drill it for me then if anything dose go wrong its his problem.

so were to put the bulkheads for the overflows, i want 2.
normally i put them in the end pannels of the tank but that is quite ugly. i carnt put them in the back as i need atlease 4" clearence for the pipes and i want the tank as close to the wall as i can get it.

im thinking about putting them in the base, 1 in each corner about 4" in fromthe back and 4" in from the side at each end ( to allow for the stand which is 4" thick around the top).

this means everything is inside the tank, no pipes sticking out the sides. im also thinking of getting bark from the reptile shop and sticking it to the pipes, so it looks like 2 trees growing in the back corners of the tank.

 

[Paul_MTS]

sounds fine. If you have the wier drilled twice you can have your return pipes coming up through the weirs aswell so you have no pipe work ouside the tank.

I reakon if you have triangle weirs rather than the usual square cut ones then it will hide them a touch better, I'm planning this on my big tank when i get it aswell.

With my weirs they were build quite small so you make the stand pipes fit in I cut down the collars on the pipe work so it took up alot less space.

I'm not sure about the bark, although i think most reptile shops sell cork bark for lizards which will obviously float. A better option might be a DIY porject witha lump of polysterene and some paint.

 

[sharp tooth]

im not adding wiers to the tank, just the pipes coming up threw the base. the top of the pipe will be the over flow. im going to find away to stick the bark to the pipe its self so it looks like a round tree trunk.

 

[Paul_MTS]

Oh right, isn't that going to make it quitre a noisy system?

I think your best option is have your standpipe then you have a large pipe that fits over it and use small nylon nuts and bolts to bolt bits of bark to the pipe that fits over the stand pipe.

 

[sharp tooth]

we will find out if its noisy mate, its all trial and error at the moment. i dont want to add wiers as they take up even more space. the only reason i want to put the pipes inside this time is because it will look neater in my liveingroom.

i was thinking about a larger pipe oveer the top already though, but for the idea of getting the water to flow from the bottom of the tank and then down the stand pipe. instead of skimming the water from the surface.

 

[Paul_MTS]

thats a good point although it could work to your advantage! If you have the top of the outer tube slightly higher and then cut slots in the top of the tube to just below the height of the inside tube, drill several holes around the bottom of the outer tube aswell then it woudl act like a double skin weir.

Taking the majority of water from the bottom, which will hopefully collect most of the muck rolling along the bottom and at the same time you will get a certain ammount of surface skimming going on to prevent a scum forming.

I reakon you could make it silent if you fix valves to the outlets and then you can control the water level inside the wier.

Completely different idea, but what about using clear PVC pipe for your stand pipes, they would barely be noticible.