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MODreefer

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Let me start by saying I’ve never setup a saltwater aquarium. So my questions will seem naive.

 

So I’m starting to plan my plumbing for a 120gal tank. It has two 3/4” and two 1” drilled holes. Not sure if I can do a Bean Animal setup or not. My questions are 1) is the return line the larger of the two sizes? 2) do I need an adjustable inline ball valve? 3) if so, is that on the return line or the drain line?

 

Any other insight is greatly appreciated.

 

 

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Also, when ordering bulkheads, is there a specific type I should be looking for? I’ve seen thread x thread ABS bulkheads and slip x slip bulkheads. Thx again for the help.


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Ah, got it. 

 

For those reef ready tanks you can look up the herbie overflow. It uses a single overflow box with the small hole as the full siphon with a valve at the sump and the large hole as open channel which gets a small and silent trickle of water and then brings the return over the back or up through the holes in the second overflow box. You could also put a tall emergency pipe in the large hole on the second overflow box. 

 

You will get plenty of water movement from the powerheads in the tank so you don't have to worry that you're only draining from one overflow. 

 

Think about if you will ever use the threads once installed. I never did. I'd go with slip ones. Especially slip on the insides because those don't even need to be glued. 

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That's an old-style overflow setup for a reef-ready tank.This setup was built to have a double-Durso setup. 

 

You could set it up with a Herbie overflow (the predecessor to the BeAnAnimal configuration). Different configurations of that are discussed on this page. (I just found the page and it's a good explanation of your Herbie options.)

 

It's not well suited to a BeAnAnimal overflow configuration. The BeAnAnimal concept incorporated severI overflow concepts that were being tried out at the time: Internal Coast-to-Coast overflows that maximized surface skimming; external overflows that shifted plumbing outside the tank; and the Herbie overflow concept, with the improvement of a third, (dry) emergency drain. I mean, you can make it work (by distributing your siphon, trickle and emergency drain pipes to three out of the four holes, leaving the last as a return perhaps), but your surface skimming will be largely limited to whatever side you chose to be your siphon-side. This latter idea would basically be a single Herbie with the emergency drain on the other side.

 

A better configuration might be dual Herbies with a balance pipe. Check the page that I linked to above for ideas.

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BTW, a balance pipe would require you to drill the back pane of glass in two places (one in each overflow cavity and at approximately the same height and below the siphon openings), install bulkheads and to tie the two sides together with a PVC pipe. The balance pipe ensures that the water level in each overflow is the same. You would then designate one pipe in each overflow to be a siphon and the other to be the trickle/emergency drains. Install balance valves on each siphon. Tune it with the balance valves so that both operate in siphon mode. Since you have two trickles operating, there's some protection from clogging. With water running through both trickle's though, there's a chance that stuff (e.g. sponge) could grow and clog each over time. If one trickle pipe were higher than the other, it would be dry and resistant to that problem. At this point, you've basically got a modified BeAnAnimal overflow configuration. 

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In a Herbie or a BeAnAnimal overflow design, there's a valve on the siphon drain. It's used to throttle the siphon, adjusting it so that there's just a little water flowing into the second (trickle) drain. The siphon runs underwater and, without air, is silent. The trickle doesn't make enough noise to be an issue usually. 

 

Sometimes we put drains on the pressure side of the return pump, too. We do this to limit flow back into the tank and, in some cases, reduce the power consumption on some pumps. So you can have valves in both places that you mentioned. They're required, though, on the siphon drain in Herbie and BeAnAnimal configurations.

 

The valve that you've pictured, though, may have metal components in it. Don't use it in your setup. Use plastic. A ball valve will work, but a (more expensive) gate valve is much easier to fine tune. 

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