What to clear up the top of the water

[dib]

I have a 56g tall tank FOWLR I have a canister filter on it. I'm not going tear it down to drill it. Water quality is fine, but I'm getting a lot of white particles on the top of the water. Is there some kind of in tank overflow that I can either make or buy that will help polish the water? Photos or links would be great.
Thanks

 

[Higher Thinking]

You don't have to drill it, but you can remove the canister and just use a skimmer.

 

[DFW]

Can you fashion some sort of pipe to connect to the inlet hose of the canister that will draw water in from the surface rather than under the surface?

 

[Mustang Man]

Aquarium Surface Skimmer

You can try someelike this. I have one attached to an AC20 in my frag tank and it works wonders. Almost the whole top of my frag tank was covered in floating debris from a piece of dry rock I put in it. The surface skimmer had it cleaned up in under an hour.

 

[Higher Thinking]

Can you fashion some sort of pipe to connect to the inlet hose of the canister that will draw water in from the surface rather than under the surface?

Canister filters don't work like that. There are very specific surface skimming filters, but almost all canisters cannot suck in air or they will stop pumping.

 

[DFW]

Canister filters don't work like that. There are very specific surface skimming filters, but almost all canisters cannot suck in air or they will stop pumping.

What if you attached the hose to the bottom of an overflow box, and hung the overflow box on the inside of the tank so that it skimmed the surface. There would be no air in the line then. I bet someone is selling something like this.

 

[gcrawford]

Surface skimmer.... I used this on my small tank along with a fluval canister filter. Fully adjustable and works great. They're like $15 I believe.

 

[Higher Thinking]

What if you attached the hose to the bottom of an overflow box, and hung the overflow box on the inside of the tank so that it skimmed the surface. There would be no air in the line then. I bet someone is selling something like this.

Good call. You could use something like this:
Aquarium Surface Skimmer

 

[Higher Thinking]

Surface skimmer.... I used this on my small tank along with a fluval canister filter. Fully adjustable and works great. They're like $15 I believe.

Missed this....
Well played speedy GCrawford.. well played.

 

[gcrawford]

Missed this....
Well played speedy GCrawford.. well played.

Actually Mustangman had the same idea! Someday I'll read threads more thoroughly...

 

[dib]

Thanks everybody