Bignose's 95G reef

digital-audiophile · #1 02-09-2009, 05:26 PM

I've actually got to bring up my emergency drain as I get too much water drop and some spalshing, the only problem is I did an anti syphon loop in the return so I need to deconstruct a little bit.. and as you know with your tank its a PITA!

While researching what to do yesterday I did find my missing baby regal tang.. he is sitting DOA at the bottom of the overfglow with no way to really get the corpse out.. I guys I just need to let the family of brisyle worms in the overflow do their work.

bignose · #2 02-09-2009, 07:12 PM

Sorry to hear about your tang. Do you think it jumped in the overflow? I'm thinking of buying a screen for my drain because I don't want anything going down it.

My overflow is very quiet but my skimmer is a different story. It's a constant hum sound which I've got used to.

I dipped into the idea of a anti-syphon loop in a previous tank plan. But I thought it was kind of bulky. I know you said it was a PITA but how are your experiences with it? good/bad?

digital-audiophile · #3 02-09-2009, 07:37 PM

The Tang must have jumped over, I do have teeth going up to the top of the tank rim so I am surprised it got in there, I had looked in the overflow after it went missing but did not see anything, it wasn't until the weekend when I turned off the pump and let the overflow/tank drain to the sump and removed the lights to get a good look in there.

Regarding the anti syphon it seemed like a good idea when I had the tank built because I wanted the returns on both sides and used lockline with difusers on the end, I just found these to be too big in actual use so I scrapped them and just had the return flowing out both sides. The Anti syphon sort of works but in the end it does not really stop that much water from going to the sump with the pump off, and my sump has enough volume to handle the extra water anyway. The other problem as I mentioned is that I want the emegency drain to go up higher, closer to the surface so I dont get as much as a splash and with the mess of 90 elbows in the middle as the ant-syphon I just cannot do it.

One of the these days when I have some time and ambition I think I will put a plug on one return side and change the return just to one 90 out one side so I can extend my emergcy line up and put a strainer on it.

In hindsight I would have built the tank with an external overflow so I would have more realestate inside the tank and a smaller overflow box on the back to pull out any debris. As it stands right now I need to getmyself one of those FW gravel vacuums so I can clean out the overflow on a regular basis. As I extended my main drain up about 6 inches with a strainer just so I could get at it if a snail or something plugged it, there seems to be a lot of debris (excess food, sand etc.) that is sitting at the bottom of the overflow box.