Vebas is having a sales this weekend, everything 20% off.
Got myself two pieces of driftwood, a big bottle of seachem prime, 4 new plants and a school of ember tetras. My 3ft is getting packed until the 6ft is ready for scaping... I hope the cuttings grow roots in the meantime.

Funny thing, my female guppy joins the tetras and schools with them  

whats the on the first pic, top right the pvc it looks abit weird, as in the pipe doesnt go right down and there is another pipe going up?

Edited December 13, 201510 yr by perplex

it's a PVC overflow, I have the piece of glass at an angle skimming the surface, then the water enters a downpipe about 10cm from the bottom, goes over the tank rim and hits a U then a Tee going back up. water goes down to the sump, the pipe going up is a vent to maintain siphon... It's taller than needed, I'd need to remove it and tweak it a little but I couldn't be F. It works. that's all that counts.

Edited December 13, 201510 yr by FMuscle

interesting, i think ive seen one of these before on youtube

it's a PVC overflow, I have the piece of glass at an angle skimming the surface, then the water enters a downpipe about 10cm from the bottom, goes over the tank rim and hits a U then a Tee going back up. water goes down to the sump, the pipe going up is a vent to maintain siphon... It's taller than needed, I'd need to remove it and tweak it a little but I couldn't be F. It works. that's all that counts.

I'm not very practical and have difficulties understanding these concepts in the first place and l can't quite figure out what is happening with this overflow setup.

One thing that comes to mind is once water is syphoning down to sump how does it not end up emptying the tank onto the floor?

The other question i have is how is water entering the overflow pipe in the first place? im not sure what you mean when you say the glass is on an angle skimming the surface?

I know I must sound very dumb but if you have the patience and time to take a couple more pictures and explain things to me I would be most grateful ! :-)

love n peace

will

No problems at all Will. It's a little bit of physics to understand how it works, but I'll try to put it as simply as possible. Let's start with the second question:

17 minutes ago, revolutionhope said:

The other question i have is how is water entering the overflow pipe in the first place? im not sure what you mean when you say the glass is on an angle skimming the surface?

If you look at the picture below, you can clearly see the piece of glass I put in the corner. My tank is 14 inches tall, that divider is 12 inches tall. So when my pump raises the water level above 12 inches, the water overflows into this corner compartment. It skims the protein layer forming on the surface as well as small floating debris. I added the plastic mesh later because of the size of my fish, they could go over easily, and I caught a shrimp walking on the edge today. An advantage of this is that my tank's water is always the same. Evaporation, water changes, adding or removing stuff from the tank, or anything else that would affect the water level of a tank with only, say a sponge filter, changes the level in my sump, not in the tank. The compartment also acts as a buffer, absorbs sudden changes, as when putting a large object in the tank.  

This leads to your first question, what happens to the water in that section?

17 minutes ago, revolutionhope said:

One thing that comes to mind is once water is syphoning down to sump how does it not end up emptying the tank onto the floor?

This is a flattened overflow:

It sits on the tank rim, left being in the tank, the right side being out. Before fitting it, I mentioned above that I primed it, which consists in turning it upside down and filling it with water. Once full, I flipped it back. The water is stuck in because there is no air gap left. Gravity now equalises both sides, the two "U" at the bottom. When water is added on the inside pipe, the level rises equally in both sections. That tall pipe is there to vent the section outside the tank so it remains at atmospheric pressure. As the level rises on both sides, the water eventually reaches the "T" on the outside and drains down to the sump. 
Since it's not actually siphoning, but draining the excess, anytime the water level in the intake pipe gets lower than the "T", the flow stops. You add a glass of water, water will flow out until the level goes back down under the "T".


The flow rate of water going down along the glass panel in the picture above is exactly the same as the flow rate in the clear pipe going to my sump here.


I hope it helped.

got it sussed. Thank you very much for taking the time to explain it. It's kinda funny how simple and obvious it seems now that I have my head around the concept :-)

Do you ever have issues with air messing up the system?

Not since it's been running. The only time it un-primed was during testing, before I drilled the vent, when I shut the valve inside the stand. with the vent, that just fills up the compartment, but without it, it caught the air in the pipe, and as water was going down the air came back up, without the vent it had nowhere to go but in the middle section and emptied the overflow...

Edited December 15, 201510 yr by FMuscle

Yay! it's the weekend!

oh nice, coming together

So I put the tank together on Friday evening. Jumping the gun a little, I cleaned it early Saturday afternoon, and resealed it Saturday evening. It is now Sunday early arvo, The cure period isn't over yet, but I just want to flood it... 



If you want more pics, I posted an article on how to build a tank.

Edited December 20, 201510 yr by FMuscle

Looks great, I cant wait to see this evolve. 

 

On the topic on page one about nano fish, I have 11 White Clouds in my 3 ft tank with shrimp, and they have not annoyed the shrimp (which I have witnessed atleast!) once. They leave the big ones alone - sometimes the shrimp scare the fish - and I have now gone from originally 10 shrimp to at least 40 at the moment with 30 ranging from 3m to 1cm. The fish do not go for the babies, although I am sure they have gobbled up a few under the cover of darkness. 

 

But from my experience, white clouds are fine with shrimp. I have had bad experiences with danios. I hear neon tetras are similar to white clouds regarding shrimp too. 

I had white clouds before with ghost shrimp, they were quiet as long as the shrimp were grazing, but as soon as one was swimming, they went for it... They couldn't catch them, but I still separated them.

I have Ember tetras now, they're in the 3ft with my culls, the closest I've seen them go was 4 cm from a shrimp. not close enough for the shrimp to swim off. The fish just turn around.

Your project looks really interesting.

On the white clouds and shrimp I've got 7 in my 200L with around 40 Caridina so wa4 or ninja shrimp and they leave them alone. They seem to hang around the top and the shrimp hang around the bottom I also have black harlequin rasboras they are fine too.

Currently 72% filled. No leaks so far, Minimal bowing recorded. I'm happy to say the bowing is under 20% of the bracing requirement, so no brace for me. I'll keep adding water gradually over the weekend to monitor the top end leaks. Then I drain and design the plumbing while waiting for my substrate to arrive. 

how did you measure the bowing? where did you find your under 20% requirement?

 

nice job, tank looks huge

measure the top of the tank at the ends, then in the middle. it will be wider in the middle. 
I have 610.5mm on the LH side, 611.0 on the RH side and 612.0 in the middle. So my bow is 1.0-1.5mm

Rule of thumb is that the bow should not be greater than the thickness or the glass, in my case 10mm. (at most 1.5mm/10mm = 15%)

 

Thanks, I just bought stuff for the next step, pipes and fittings. My 3ft is taller, but has only a third of the capacity... I have the impression I could fit the 3ft 5 times in the 6ft

Edited December 24, 201510 yr by FMuscle

So this is a long weekend... So glad to have some time off. 
While most of you were drinking "just one more" or trying to stay away from sharp objects and/or the mother-in-law, I've been busy. 

I finished filling the coffin. No leaks. 

I drained the coffin, siphoning the water through an airline and using it to clean my play sand from Bunnings.

I mocked up the return and overflow. Modified the overflow design. Trice. 

Added power to the stand.


Made the overflow and inlet plumbing, only missing the very last piece as I'm waiting to have the sump in place to verify measurements. Also tested the overflow (it works).






And built my sump...






I'm missing a couple of important pieces, the first being a floor for the stand, a plywood sheet for the equipment to rest on. Should get it tomorrow.
The other is a special piece of plastic that will delay the flooding, but would be well worth the wait. But I'm not saying more about this for now... :P

Man you should be so proud, its such a great looking tank. Other then the size the big thing that i like is that its lowline and not a high tank.

 

I really like that you make a sump with a plastic tub to! Good ingenuity, i would never have thought of it lol. Wouldnt mind seeing a little write up on exactly how you did it and what type of tub etc you use :)

Thanks Oz

Buy the cheapest tub in the size range you need, cut the lid to size, silicone in place. I would have liked a clear one, but they were so bloody expensive, and I was to lazy to go to multiple shops... I got it from bunnings, but target has cheaper ones, and clear. I use a target one on my 3ft, but it's not divided.

I like the fact that this one has the design on the side, those humps. It give strenght and made it easy to position the baffles. 

I am thinking about building an internal sump in my tank when i move cause it will be empty anyway. But definitely like this as a back up option 

I was looking at the tub trying to figure out what to use for baffles... then it hit me (actually, I sat on it). the lid matches colours (!) and is the perfect size. I even have a lid still...

looking good @FMuscle.

Cant wait to see what you do with the scape of this low tank.

Thanks @jayc, it looks even better now:

That. Was. A. Nightmare.
Try to slide a 6ft piece of MDF into a 6ft stand when you have only 8ft by 4 ft working space...

But it does looks so good now!

nice work. keep the updates coming :-)