AlanM

I'm out now but I will check forum permissions tonight to see if I can figure out what's going on here.

Sounds like a good plan.

Yes, I built two of them with no 2x4 internal support using biscuit joints and glue, no screws. The joints don't hold any weight anyway, they just keep the panels from falling off. If you put the pieces together right it's absolutely rock solid. https://wamas.org/forums/topic/54660-alans-rimless-75-build/?tab=comments#comment-482911

It looks like you have a ball valve on the high drain and nothing on the low drain. Is that accurate?

how is that box installed on your tank and how is it plumbed into your sump?

It's a fun read. About fish tank sizes that all but one of us are never having. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/realestate/high-end-home-aquariums.html I wish they'd given Copps a call as someone who did it all himself and runs a better layout than anything described in the article.

Hah. I've only used a shop vac to finish emptying a tank I intend to sell. I've switched out sumps before, but for some reason never thought of it. I always ended up with water on the floor after siphoning out what I could and then using towels.

I think you're good in that last video. I believe any remaining noise is due to turbulence going from the drain chamber to the next chamber. I don't see any air bubbling, just some trickling noise. Is the square opening in the second box for a sock? I bet if you get a sock in there or something it will quiet down. It will also quiet down a little once you get some slime coat built up after running.

Yeah, don't add more pipe below the water surface until trying a few other things. The siphon is caused by the height difference between the water level in the external overflow box and the water level in the sump. Extra pipe below the sump water surface doesn't help. It's just extra length of round wall to hold in air before it can get out of the pipe and into your sump as a bubble that pops. I didn't say anything before, but the horizontal segments you put in your drain under the gate valve may compromise getting the full siphon going somewhat. You only have around 3 feet of vertical height (from the water level in the box to the water level in the sump) for the water to accelerate down the pipes. If you think about what needs to happen. You want the water moving as fast as possible due to gravity from the box down to the sump. That speed is what will bring the air with it (which wants to bubble in the other direction toward the ceiling if it's moving too slowly). The horizontal segment at the bottom is a "floor" that the water will have to hit and turn to continue pushing air along. Water is incompressible, so it will be a limit on how fast the stream can get going. If you google around horizontal runs and BeanAnimal you'll see lots of people with problems starting the siphon pipe with a horizontal run. And your horizontal run is "after" the gate valve, which is where the water will be going the slowest. The gate valve is a variable reducer that will be mostly closed once the water siphon is set up. It might be too late, but if it's possible I would replace the 90 degree elbows with 45's and a slanted section with the gate valve at the sump end of it (rather than before the sloped section) if you have trouble getting all of the air out. The closer the gate goes to the sump the better.

I think you're still getting air out of the full siphon. Do you see air going into it at the top? Eventually it should get no air coming out the bottom if no air is coming in the top. It's the air that's noisy. So my advice for tuning the thing would be to completely close the gate valve. That will ensure that the emergency can handle an emergency as well. Then slowly start opening the gate valve. As you open the valve it will eventually start kind of hissing out small air bubbles and will eventually "flush" all of the air out of the line. Once it flushes, close it back a bit and that's your set point. Keep an eye on the water level in the top box so it doesn't empty. If you leave it flushing it will eventually drain the box and you'll be back where you started with a siphon line full of air. A 1 inch drain can take a staggering amount of flow when in full siphon.

BTW, the emergency pipe can go down under if you want, but it should also probably terminate near the surface. It won't have a big impact on noise while running, but if the main gets clogged that one needs to be able to convert into a full siphon so you don't want anything preventing that from happening. Feel free to have the water level below the emergency with that pipe up pretty high so it's totally dry most of the time and ready for action if bad things happen. It doesn't have to trickle all the time like the "open channel" in a BeanAnimal design.

For a full siphon pipe you want the pipe to terminate just barely under the sump water level for the reason you guessed. It will never purge if the air needs to push out more water on the bottom end than there is water on the top side pushing on it. Try to get it around 1/2" under the water surface. Normally the drain chamber has a fixed water level anyway, so it shouldn't be too hard.

I also love the idea of a huge remote sump and small display full of stuff that you shouldn't be able to keep in such a little display. My worry with those was always that if you're pumping water upstairs you are using a pretty strong pump and if anything goes wrong you don't have any buffer for extra water in the display, heh.

What are you using the 80/20 on the back for? This is looking really nice.

@Origamihas experience with well water.

They don't really look like acro eating flatworms to me. More like acoel flatworms which are harmless. In my old tank there were a few spots with them that would kind of wax and wane.

Stay safe out there. Hope you don't have to tackle anyone misbehaving these days.

Hmm. My 180 should be fine, I'd think. I only had it set up for around a year, but I would probably make sure the bulkhead seals are good. I don't know about the 120. You could always put it on the floor and fill it and leave it for a while to see if it seemed fine. I would not expect a failure of the bottom pane if the caulk isn't visibly damaged, though. It's a bit hard to see it because of the frame though, I bet.

Could you just pull out the rock and let it dry in the sun for a while then cure it afterwards? Bleach will take a while to neutralize, but letting the polyps all dry out will definitely make them dead.

This is a bit older thread, but one thing to be concerned about on a well is lots of CO2 in the water can eat up one of the two components in a mixed cation-anion resin. I forget which. Tom @Origami has dealt with well water before and can give advice.

I agree. Just run it for a while in a bucket with some RO water and if it isn't foaming like crazy, then you should be fine. You're right that you don't want to be putting surfactants into your reef tank.

The caulk you see inside the tank is a protective one that keeps water from getting to the actual seal that holds the glass panes together. The glass is held together and leak tight because of the thin layer of silicone squished (hopefully without bubbles or damage) between the end of one pane and the side of the other. Then a bead of caulk is applied to the inside and tapered down to keep water from getting to that seal and damaging it. Having said all that, if you want to do a new bead inside the tank you'd have to scrape it all off, clean it pretty well with a razor and maybe some solvents to remove extra residue, and then re-apply. I'm not sure a new layer over the existing one would do much. Plus it would probably end up looking bad. Others who have been around longer than me will be able to offer advice on a tank that has sat around for a while and if you can trust the seal or should reseal it. I guess if I had a tank I couldn't trust I wouldn't try to repair it unless I had a really good reason. Small tanks are relatively cheap, given the other costs in this hobby, and the potential cost of a mishap is so huge for a big tank that it wouldn't be worth it to me.

It will be interesting to see how they deal with now selling Neptune gear through their direct online competitors and local fish stores.

How does your current external one work? Do you have a link to the product somewhere so we can see what it is? Maybe we could help it work better. Drilling a tank is never a guarantee. I think anyone who would come to help drill it for you would want you to definitely be OK with losing the tank since it can crack even if someone is being careful. You also have to be really sure that the glass is not tempered. Many tanks are tempered because it makes the glass harder, but if you try to drill a tempered glass tank it explodes into a million pieces. If you know the manufacturer you could ask them.

I'm getting lots of side polyps from the zoas already, so thanks to the members who sold them to me. They were healthy! I lost a fruit loops frag somewhere. Amazing that a rock with zoas on it can go completely missing in such a small tank, but it's nowhere. Bizarro. I do like the tiny fruit loops polyps, though, so at some point I'm interested in getting a nice sized frag of that and some more ricordia colors. The green ones are multiplying and seem to be doing fine.