Surge Tanks

Fishcrazy06

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Does anyone here run a surge tank on their aquarium? I know SaraB does. But I was wondering if anyone else does? I am thinking of incorporating 2 of these when I start my 240 Wide build.

If you do do you have any pictures of it? Do you like or dislike it? How did you build yours? Thanks in Advance.

Eric
 

rng_pw

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I had a friend that put a pretty big surge tank on his 240. I believe that it was about 60 gallons. Any way I dont have pics and the tank is no longer up but it did a great job of moving some water. The only problem was that it was really loud and it rattled the whole house when it was draining. As far as any other problems with it I would have to ask him but he did mention that he would not do it again. He said that it was to hard to keep the water level stable. He had to add water manually because everytime the water would get pumped into the surge his ato would turn on and add water to the sump. I know that there are probably better ways of doing it though. Good luck
 

Acroholic

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I ran a Carlson surge device on my 58 gallon reef in the 1990s. It worked well, but there were a lot of microbubbles in the tank, and a lot of salt spray inside the canopy. I believe you may find some information if you do a search on another forum, the one with the Tang on the home page. Back then ATOs were non-existent.

You might have issues with an ATO kicking on using a surge device bacause of fluctuating water levels in the sump because the Surge reservoir will draw water out of the sump as it fills.

To counteract issues with the ATO, you might be able to place it to where it turns on when the reservoir reaches its low point. Evaporation makeup could be done when the surge is full and the sump is at its lowest point, the lowest point being the point at where the ATO turns on.

Dave
 

Harry_Y

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I wonder if something like a Tunze wavebox would be easier
and give close to the same effect.

I saw pictures of a tank where they built waveboxes into the
tank, so all you saw was a hole the rest was out of sight.
 

macawmagic

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theres someone out there that used float switches inside the surge to open/close an actuated ball valve. needless to say it was 100% bubbless/noiseless surge device! but at the price of the ball valves, I'd rather just buy some vortechs.
 

benny z

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I wonder if something like a Tunze wavebox would be easier
and give close to the same effect.

I saw pictures of a tank where they built waveboxes into the
tank, so all you saw was a hole the rest was out of sight.

with creative aquascaping you don't even need the external boxes to hide the waveboxes. mine is at the back of my tank, completely hidden from view from the front side of the tank by a tower that goes to the water surface.

as mentioned, micro bubbles, noise, insane salt creep, and ato complications are the primary drawbacks to surge devices.

inland aquatics in terre haute, indiana, uses turf scrubbing surge devices as one of their primary filtration methods.
 

Murfman

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FateX8

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ive never had a surge device on my tanks but why would you have it taking out of the sump?
it should be drawing the water directly from the display, otherwise youre going to be dumping a crap ton of water into a full tank
unless you have a huge drain that can handle the flow but the whole point of a surge is to dump as quickly as possible
and if you have a sump on top of a surge then the ato should just be connected to the sump and the sump shouldnt fluctuate except with evap
you deffinately wouldnt be able to surface skim though so you would have to have a drain somewhere lower in the tank
 

benny z

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Benny, I'd love to see some pix of your wavebox install. Mine is in the front and if there are other options, I'd love to explore them.

sure thing...

this is the back of my tank - the wavebox from this view is in the right-hand corner, mostly out of view in the first picture, but you can see some of it. the overflow in the center is 5" off the back wall to allow the wavebox to fire down the entire length of the tank. the rest of the aquascaping is also at least 5" from the back wall creating an open channel.

backoftank.jpg


backright.jpg


this is an overhead view showing the open channel:

rearchannel.jpg


this is the same tower hiding the wavebox from the front of the tank:

humilis.jpg


cheers,
ben
 

Murfman

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Real nice, Benny. I can't do that, I have a huge rock up against the overflow on that side of my tank. You can see it here in my Oct FTS.

Oct09FTS.jpg


I had to mount the WB to the eurobrace since I have 6" of wall behind the left side of the tank.
View from the end;
IMG_1990.jpg
 
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benny z

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yeah, it is pretty hard to do with traditional overflow placement after the fact. i had the tank built around the wavebox concept, with the overflow in the middle and off the back wall.
 

Reef Breeders

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Surge devices are, like mentioned, loud, and put in a ton of micro bubbles. I would go with those oscillating return devices and a strong return pump/closed loop system, way cleaner, and takes less space up.
 

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