I have this tank that has 4 holes drilled in the bottom, 2 per overflow stack. Could I put the full siphon in one stack and the partial siphon in the other?
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I agree. When I saw there are 4 holes I immediately thought of Bean Animal. I highly recommend it. I'm pretty sure it will work as long as the flow rate into the overflow is greater than the flow rate from the return pump.That could work but are you sure you don't want use a BeanAnimal setup for the extra control and redundancy? The Bean will use 3 of the 4 holes you have available. Although I have only done this with a single overflow box, I'd guess that you would put full siphon and open line in one box and the emergency overflow and return in the other one. But perhaps someone with more experience can weigh in here.
Bruce
135 gallon and 1 inch pipe through out. I thought about bean animal but I don't want to lose a return line and I don't plan on drilling this 5/8 inch glass. CVould I just lower one of the dursos and put a gate valve on it?What size are the pipes and how big is the tank?
Would it work with having the drains in different overflow stacks?You can do a modified bean, minus the dry pipe. That way the secondary drain will transition into full siphon if the water level starts to rise. It covers the siphon break tube and allows a siphon to form. Its basically what you were doing with a better secondary drain that is dynamic.
Forget the bean. you could do a Herbie, but typically you want the emergency larger than the main siphon pipe. I have run them with the same size however.
Here is what a wet drain does after a few years...
https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/300767/
Would you trust that going from 5% to 100% of your water going through that in an emergency?
I absolutely do understand how a herbie works as bean is built on the same principle with the primary and secondary drains performing the same purpose in both. The main is choked down with a valve on both until it goes full siphon and the secondary drain carries the small amount of trickle down the inside of the pipe. In both designs if the main drain clogs the secondary takes the burden and must go from a trickle to carrying 100% of the water.I think you are not understanding what Herbie style plumbing accomplishes. It does not have an emergency drain. A "wet" drain as you call it - more commonly referred to as an "open channel" - exists to enable the full siphon drain to balance out. It would be nearly impossible (actually is impossible in practice) to have a full siphon running without a little water trickling over into the open channel. That is its intended purpose and not as a backup that will take the volume of the full-siphon should the need arise. In the unlikely scenario that all of your drains become clogged at once, you should not flood no matter what system you run (Bean, Herbie, Durso).
A Bean is overkill but it does have a purpose. In the video you can see the other tank has a Bean style drain. The purpose is to keep your system running "normally" should you experience a clog in your other drains. It is nice to have this fail-safe but it should not be used for flood-avoidance as that is just bad system design. With the video I posted and using 2 overflows and 2 sets of Herbie drains, there is virtually no chance at all of all 4 drains clogging at the same time. If one side does, the system will become noisy but will not flood nor stop circulating. I'd argue that the noise (from your single working full-siphon drain not being able to keep up with the return water) is a good thing since it would alert you to a problem.
The water level in the dt starts to rise and it covers the siphon break and the secondary suddenly goes full siphon and can pull way more water than the secondary on a herbie ever could as full siphons are crazy flow. But what if it is not enough still and even in full siphon the secondary just cant take the flow due to buildup from always being wet.
Your understanding of Herbie is not correct. Herbie open channel drains are not designed to go full siphon in the event of a main drain clog