So, The pieces I have been waiting on have arrived - pump and outflow accessories - and I'm going to try my hand at rebuilding the AIO chamber of the tank I have.
The tank is a 3 gallon Marineland contour AIO that I ripped the back partition out of in order to give the tank a larger display space for a freshwater setup. I now want to rebuild a smaller AIO partition so I can keep the filtration inside the tank, and I want something a little more powerful than an airstone moving the water around.
This is the tank pre-change. The black portion on the back is still there, and I'm trying to keep the new partition's depth within that space.
The fittings are all half inch with 1/4 inch Y reducer on the loc-line. The pump is absolutely tiny at 2 inches x 1.875 inches, and should move somewhere around 90 GPH at max speed. It is adjustable. This will be the first time I've modified a tank in this way, so I'm looking for the experience of others. I'm likely going to build a basket for media inside, but I'm looking for opinions on the size of that chamber.
This is my initial draft, a 4 inch x 2.25 inch chamber with the long side as the weir and the short side providing the return port location. This is keeping the entire chamber within the black lining that the original AIO chamber resided, but giving me back some 5.5 x2.25 inches of tank space, which is important real estate in a pico as well as the amount of water. The weir slots are .75 inches tall, and the tank is 8.75 inches tall, so there's a .25 inch gap between the top of the chamber and the top of the tank to account for the lid.
I'm drafting this so I can get 1/8 inch black acrylic custom cut to make this build, but there's no real rush. My final goal is to fit the heater, pump and maybe a single or double stack of filtering options, like a fine mesh filter pad + some kind of media inside of this section.
My questions are:
Are there enough weir slits?
Should the chamber be shorter overall? (I'm thinking maybe it might require more space for airflow etc between the chamber and the glass lid)
Is the chamber large enough?
Could it be smaller? (Square was my original plan, but the rectangle provided more opportunity for filtering in my opinion.)
Even though it would run outside of the black lining, should I rotate the chamber so the outflow is facing forward and the weir on the side? (This is an option, just not the preferred one.)
I appreciate anyone who chimes in, I'm pretty handy with my hands, but this is completely new to me!
The tank is a 3 gallon Marineland contour AIO that I ripped the back partition out of in order to give the tank a larger display space for a freshwater setup. I now want to rebuild a smaller AIO partition so I can keep the filtration inside the tank, and I want something a little more powerful than an airstone moving the water around.
This is the tank pre-change. The black portion on the back is still there, and I'm trying to keep the new partition's depth within that space.
The fittings are all half inch with 1/4 inch Y reducer on the loc-line. The pump is absolutely tiny at 2 inches x 1.875 inches, and should move somewhere around 90 GPH at max speed. It is adjustable. This will be the first time I've modified a tank in this way, so I'm looking for the experience of others. I'm likely going to build a basket for media inside, but I'm looking for opinions on the size of that chamber.
This is my initial draft, a 4 inch x 2.25 inch chamber with the long side as the weir and the short side providing the return port location. This is keeping the entire chamber within the black lining that the original AIO chamber resided, but giving me back some 5.5 x2.25 inches of tank space, which is important real estate in a pico as well as the amount of water. The weir slots are .75 inches tall, and the tank is 8.75 inches tall, so there's a .25 inch gap between the top of the chamber and the top of the tank to account for the lid.
I'm drafting this so I can get 1/8 inch black acrylic custom cut to make this build, but there's no real rush. My final goal is to fit the heater, pump and maybe a single or double stack of filtering options, like a fine mesh filter pad + some kind of media inside of this section.
My questions are:
Are there enough weir slits?
Should the chamber be shorter overall? (I'm thinking maybe it might require more space for airflow etc between the chamber and the glass lid)
Is the chamber large enough?
Could it be smaller? (Square was my original plan, but the rectangle provided more opportunity for filtering in my opinion.)
Even though it would run outside of the black lining, should I rotate the chamber so the outflow is facing forward and the weir on the side? (This is an option, just not the preferred one.)
I appreciate anyone who chimes in, I'm pretty handy with my hands, but this is completely new to me!