1-something "moving-I-should-upgrade" reef

[tlhood]

Hehe - I find my most productive tank planning occurs while I am at work...


There were a few problems with my original design (external overflow, 30" deep).
1) The tank would be way too far out from the wall, and would throw off the balance of the room.
2) I reallllly wanted the extra depth to the tank.
3) The extra depth would force me to put the tank into the media room as all our other doors are abnormally narrow, so the tank would have to sit at the back behind the couch (mad face)
4) I want the inside of the display to look as clean as possible - so I wanted to avoid an internal overflow box.

The solutionnnnnn
1) Suck it up and put in an internal overflow and drill that bad boy through the bottom.
2) Make the overflow a corner overflow, put the returns on the other corner, and at least have the center at 30"
3) Yay the tank can sit where I want it to in the media room.
4) I was planning to have my aqua scape come out from the corners anyways so they will hide a large portion of the overflow.

yay magic!

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Highly recommend you make tank taller than 22" unless its already made or in the process of being built. The extra few inches would give your corals room to grow upwards before they hit the surface and its also nice to have room above the corals and aquascaping for the fish to swim. Just saying

[tlhood]

But I have short stubby arms and can't reach...

[maron6977]

For internal overflow : consider this

Was quite happy how it turned out & good flow around tank with angled corners!

[maron6977]

Oh, I put the bends in it for 2 reasons :
Structural strength
Smallest overflow I could make & still get bulkheads in & out

Plus once water & rock are in it , it's a little deceiving & don't even notice the overflow.