17.1 Mr Aqua Bedroom Tank w/Planar Overflow

[DurocShark]

Glass is dirty, but added some friends.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hmmm... Interesting concept. I'm going to noodle on this more. I have questions, but I want to think about them more first.

 

[DurocShark]

I think my clown has velvet. At least I haven't put a bunch of corals in there yet. I can treat in tank. There are two other fish in there as well who will likely need treatment.

 

[philfree]

This is great. Good job! Was watching this for a while. Following now.

 

[DurocShark]

I was too late in the treatment... The velvet took out my tailspot blenny. I think that's the fish that brought the velvet into my tank. That's what I get for not QTing the fish.

Some notes on the tank build itself. Based on some recommendations from others who have done herbie style overflows, I created a small leak between the regular overflow and the emergency overflow as part of the build. I wish I hadn't. While it's not loud by any means, the small trickle of water is noisy enough to keep me from sleeping. I had been reduced to turning the return pump off at night to sleep. Not terrible, since the powerhead keeps the water moving through the rock so bio filtration is still happening, and there's plenty of water movement to keep the water well oxygenated. However, it's not the solution I wanted and I found it's awfully easy to forget to turn it back on in the morning. Yeah a timer would work, but I'd rather have the filter working all the time.

Last night I tried capping the emergency overflow pipe instead. That made a nice overflow mess since the primary overflow was tuned for the volume of the overflow PLUS the emergency overflow leak. The leak is small enough that it took a while to overflow, and I wasn't in the room. Whoops! I re-tuned with the emergency capped, but now during the day when it's not capped the tank is really loud. But it's dead silent when it is capped. A great night's sleep was had with the super silent tank.

I won't design in a leak like that again, that's for sure. If I choose to have one in future builds, I'll make it controllable from outside the tank instead of inside the planar weir itself. Also, if the other fish succumb to the velvet (there's only two), I'll tear the tank apart and get rid of that leak. Another issue is the Target "stand" is very susceptible to water. The craptacular particle board it's made from bubbled in a couple places. So if I tear the tank down, I'll be building a proper stand instead of this thing.

The planar overflow design works perfectly and I love it. I just made a bad choice on building in a leak.

 

[IdahoNano]

Sorry to hear about the loss of your fish, never fun :-( I have an "arrangement" with my local lfs, they quarantine my fish for me so I don't have to lol!

 

[supertech99]

I think this is a neat build. I appreciate non traditional designs. Could you add a few pics from the side? Is there a glass spacer to make room for the bulkheads and the water flow?

 

[XR750]

3 sections... Left is the overflow. Center is emergency overflow. Right is return. I use the term "planar" because the gap between the glass that the water flows down is only 3/32". So the water forms a flat sheet down the overflow into the weir. That weir is on the bottom (the dogleg section) with the 3 bulkheads.

Does that help any?

I just added some more pipe to the emergency overflow. That trickle that goes down it makes a heck of a racket. So I extended down below the water line in the sump like the primary. Blessed silence.

Compliments for thinking outside the box and being innovative. Some questions:
What material did you use as a separator between the sections? Why a 3/32" gap? Am I correct in thinking the horizontal leg has a larger gap due to the bulkhead thickness?

 

[revhtree]

Compliments for thinking outside the box and being innovative. Some questions:
What material did you use as a separator between the sections? Why a 3/32" gap? Am I correct in thinking the horizontal leg has a larger gap due to the bulkhead thickness?

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[DurocShark]

Compliments for thinking outside the box and being innovative. Some questions:
What material did you use as a separator between the sections? Why a 3/32" gap? Am I correct in thinking the horizontal leg has a larger gap due to the bulkhead thickness?

Whoops. Life got in the way, and I haven't checked on this thread in ages. My apologies.

3/32 is because that is the thickness of the glass I used for spacers. I wanted the gap to be wide enough to let plenty of water flow, while thin enough to keep fish from getting inside. And yes, the horizontal leg is much thicker to accommodate the bulkheads.

I had a bunch of stuff happen starting in August. A car accident, a possible move (that ended up not happening, grrrr), the holidays, and family illnesses. So I hadn't been monitoring my tanks all that closely. I had noticed, however, that my corals weren't looking as happy as they normally do. My rock nem was tiny and looked bleached. My hammer wasn't extending, same with my cup coral, but the softies and fish seemed to be doing ok. But I hadn't been checking params. I did a quick test and nitrates and phosphates were ok, alk was a little low but not bad, but salinity. EEK. 1.019. SharkDaughter has been using water from this tank to give to her land hermit crabs. Normally I correct any imbalance when I do water changes, but those have been infrequent at best and I haven't been testing. Teach me.

Mixed up a gallon of high salinity (1.030) water and have an Aqualift dosing it in a trickle now. I'm up to 1.021 as of this writing after an hour.

I expect I'll lose that rock nem, but everybody else already looks happier.

 

[melypr1985]

Man! Sorry to hear that.

 

[DurocShark]

Now that I've been bringing my poor neglected tank back I thought I'd take some silly pictures. I didn't realize how bad my cup had gotten, after it was recovering so well from the tank move. My RBTA is all shrunk and hiding. My shaving brush got knocked loose from its rock. I tried just jamming it into the sand, but there's too much flow for that. I need to go get some super glue gel. And of course the bubble algae is back. Today during my water change I'm going to have to go bubble hunting.

Anyway, pic through my Avast Porthole using my cellphone. I have no idea where my DSLR is hiding right now. The clowns came to see what I was doing.

 

[DurocShark]

My neon dottyback is a d**k to hermit crabs.

Here he is guarding his most recent kill. As you can see, his belly is full so he's taking a break from eating. The white blur at the bottom of the pic is the remains of the poor blue legged hermit.

 

[philfree]

Bummer, theyre lil jerks.
FTS?

 

[DurocShark]

FTS?

Soon. Stuff's a mess right now. I did (finally) hang the dang light. It's been setting on the rim of the tank all this time. But the metal housing is starting to corrode from the salt, and I reached into the tank and got a zap. Isolated it to the light getting damp. So the issue was forced.

 

[DurocShark]

Well, crap.

Heater stuck on. Came home to the water over 100*. I have a controller, but the sensor got bumped or something as it was out of the water. So my tank heater was trying to heat my room.

All fish and crabs dead. Most corals too. Zoas, GSP, and pipe organ seem to have weathered the storm but that's it. The smell is amazing (in a bad way). Big water change and got the temps down to 82. It'll slowly drop to the programmed 78.

Lesson? Secure the(@*$^#^%(@*&^#$ probe.

 

[philfree]

Oh my....
Thats horrible! Sorry to hear this.

 

[cmcoker]

[emoji45] sorry to hear

 

[revhtree]

Well, crap.

Heater stuck on. Came home to the water over 100*. I have a controller, but the sensor got bumped or something as it was out of the water. So my tank heater was trying to heat my room.

All fish and crabs dead. Most corals too. Zoas, GSP, and pipe organ seem to have weathered the storm but that's it. The smell is amazing (in a bad way). Big water change and got the temps down to 82. It'll slowly drop to the programmed 78.

Lesson? Secure the(@*$^#^%(@*&^#$ probe.

Dang man so sorry....

 

[Supurderek]

Darn. Sorry!