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Hi all, I am in need some advice, I've no experience with plumbing whatsoever (with the exception of using canister filters with chillers if that counts) so please bear with me if my questions seem silly or obvious! I came across 2 cheap 4 foot tanks with holes drilled already in the base of them that I am hoping to use. There are only a couple of minor scratches here and there and the only damage is on a back corner where the bezel is chipped - I intend to silicone this inside and out to be safe. Anyway I have a few points that I'd really love help to address. - How best to plumb these 2 sitting at the same height and integrate a sump. - Is it feasible to use 2 eheim canisters with a my chiller connected to a sump? When I only ran one canister the flowrate was not quite enough and the chiller was turning on and off too frequently as a result. Do I have to just bite the bullet and fork out money on a pump instead? - Opinions on how best to divide the setup into several bays for different colonies. Currently I am looking at following Paul Minett's lead using tropical flyscreen which has less than 0.4mm aperture but he has told me there is still the occasional fugitive baby. Thanks in advance, once I actually start doing anything on this setup I will post the progress in a journal here. Once again NB I am totally clueless so I'd appreciate it if you could dumb down your suggestions for me :-) Love and peace Will

I'm slowly planning my first larger shrimp tank for when I get to a new house in July. It's a 90L tank and quite tall, and I'd like to divide it in the middle. Substrate will be inert sand or gravel because I'm aiming for Ph ~7 for neos and tigers and don't want to replace a buffering substrate once it stops buffering. So I'm thinking with a tall divided tank I want to be careful how I manage the water flow to ensure good circulation. I have two of these canister and planned to use one for the tank, but can hook up the second as well for redundancy: http://www.thetechden.com.au/Eheim_Classic_250_2213_no_media_p/eh2213542.htm What I'm thinking for the divider is something solid up from the top most of the way down, but with mesh at the bottom for a couple inches before the substrate. Perhaps with seachem matrix piled up around the mesh to hide it and provide a nice grazing spot for the shrimp. The idea being that I place the inlet of the canister filter on at the far end of one side of the tank, and the outlet on the far end of the other side of the tank. Because the mesh is at the bottom, the water is forced to flow down over the substrate to cross the divider and helping to avoid stagnant areas. Does this seem sane? Also considering if it's worth going an UGFs in addition to this (obs with deeper substrate)... possibly positioning it so the outlet is on one side of the divider but the rest of it is on the other side of the divider so it's sucking the water through from one side and expelling it on the other.