Laconic
01-12-2011, 12:14 PM
The design is out on the net already but this may help some if they see the process with pictures. I looked at a couple setups out there and decided to go with this one:
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/5841/37274752478cf005dab5o.jpg
Here is my setup: I have a 55G water storage tank in my laundry room that is 10 feet away from my aquarium in the next room (of course I had to drill a small hole in my drywall to get the hose to the display aquarium in the other room). I have a mag 7 pump in the storage tank that uses 1/2" vinyl tubing to carry clean water to the aquarium.
For the return, I took Darrell Ward's advice from another post and added a PVC to garden hose adapter on the one end. I went with 3/4" PVC as I thought it would be able to exceed the 1/2" intake of my Mag 7 pump. So turnining the above pic into reality, this is what I made. Please note that I am a horrible handy-man so if I can do this, anyone can! The right side would go in the water/
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/4033/unpainted.jpg
The nice thing about 3/4" PVC was that I could use suction cups from aquarium heaters to hold the outflow in place. The two pieces of pipe with the suction cups on them are 8". The piece that rises above the PVC to garden hose adapter is also 8" with the goal of having it higher than the U at the top. The purpose of this piece is to be able to pour water into it to prime the 2nd portion of the outflow (with the aid of a funnell). This replaces the hole noted in the sketch above. The reason it is higher then the rest is so you can reach it when installed behind an aquarium. Once primed, I added a cap to it but did NOT glue the cap on in case I need to prime in the future.
The biggest bottleneck in the return (and not mentioned in the sketch) is the U that hangs over the aquarium. If air gets trapped in there, the syphon stops and its difficult to get the water in that section. To overcome this, some genius' put a hole there and added and aquarium air pump check valve and this works great! I used a 13/64 drill bit and made the hole, I put the check valve in with a small piece of air hose attached (make sure you put the check valve in the right way!! You should be able to draw air from the valve but not blow air in). I crazy glued the opening AFTER the valve was in.
When you prime the outflow for the first time, you may have to suck some air our through the check-valve to get it going.
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/4655/drillhole.jpghttp://img220.imageshack.us/img220/621/drillhole3.jpghttp://img408.imageshack.us/img408/7949/drillhole2.jpg
Time for a dry-fit test run. At this point, you can determine the desirable water line for your aquarium based on the length of the PVC pipe in the aquarium (I had to cut the length a few times to get it where I wanted it). Notice you can bend the joints to the configuration you desire. I have 2 inches of space between the water line and the absolute top of the tank. You need some space for water to at least the top of the 90 degree intake tube hole to get the syphon pressure going strong. Mine is set up to have it in the back-left corner of the aquarium eventually with the garden hose facing left as well. If you look close, water is coming our of the pipes!
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7871/dryfittest.jpg
The 3/4" PVC works fine but the biggest drawback is that the best outflow I could get was 80 Gallons per hour so a 20% change for my 100G display tank would take 15 min. It does not sound bad but if you do it each day, its noticable.
The PVC pipe size will be the hardest decision if you undertake this project. You can make the overflow with bigger PVC and it will be faster but you will have large pipes in the aquarium which do not look nice (in my opinion). The 3/4" is small but slow. As the aquarium is in my TV room, the 15 min was not a big deal to me so I stayed with this size.
One of my biggest surprises was with the mag 7 pump. It boasts a 700GPH return. I have a 20" vinyl hose attached to it and there is around 7 feet of head (2 feet to get out of the storage aquarium and 5 feet to get up the display aquarium stand and aquarium top). I knew this would slow the rate but was surprised that my testing showed only 110GPH of water flow.
So the clean water coming into the tank is 110GPH and my syphon-powered return is 80GPH. I had to slow the intake speed so I added a valve to the intake link to slow it down a bit (shown a bit later)
Next step was to PVC glue the outflow contraption after double-checking the configuration. Man does that stuff dry fast! I had about 5 seconds to move the joints in place before I could not twist them anymore!
This next step is optional. I have a royal blue background so to hide the PVC I bought some special plastic paint similar to Krylon Fusion:
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/3633/paintv.jpg
And the finished product:
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/4400/paintedy.jpg
In case you wondered, the purpose of the 90 degree on the end pipe in the water was so I could place it extremly close to the corner glass in the hopes that no fish or debris would get into the pipe.
I had some extra pipe left so I built another contraption to add onto my vynil intake hose (notice the water control valve mentioned earlier.)
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/9811/intakeinuse.jpg
Here is the finished product installed in the back of the tank. If you can not see it, good!
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/2457/intank.jpg
I could have added a timer to the mag 7 so it would auto-pump water into the aquarium but I want to be around just in case of an overflow issue. In a final step of laziness, I added quick attach connectors to my python and to the hose that refills my storage.
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/3221/python.jpg
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/5841/37274752478cf005dab5o.jpg
Here is my setup: I have a 55G water storage tank in my laundry room that is 10 feet away from my aquarium in the next room (of course I had to drill a small hole in my drywall to get the hose to the display aquarium in the other room). I have a mag 7 pump in the storage tank that uses 1/2" vinyl tubing to carry clean water to the aquarium.
For the return, I took Darrell Ward's advice from another post and added a PVC to garden hose adapter on the one end. I went with 3/4" PVC as I thought it would be able to exceed the 1/2" intake of my Mag 7 pump. So turnining the above pic into reality, this is what I made. Please note that I am a horrible handy-man so if I can do this, anyone can! The right side would go in the water/
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/4033/unpainted.jpg
The nice thing about 3/4" PVC was that I could use suction cups from aquarium heaters to hold the outflow in place. The two pieces of pipe with the suction cups on them are 8". The piece that rises above the PVC to garden hose adapter is also 8" with the goal of having it higher than the U at the top. The purpose of this piece is to be able to pour water into it to prime the 2nd portion of the outflow (with the aid of a funnell). This replaces the hole noted in the sketch above. The reason it is higher then the rest is so you can reach it when installed behind an aquarium. Once primed, I added a cap to it but did NOT glue the cap on in case I need to prime in the future.
The biggest bottleneck in the return (and not mentioned in the sketch) is the U that hangs over the aquarium. If air gets trapped in there, the syphon stops and its difficult to get the water in that section. To overcome this, some genius' put a hole there and added and aquarium air pump check valve and this works great! I used a 13/64 drill bit and made the hole, I put the check valve in with a small piece of air hose attached (make sure you put the check valve in the right way!! You should be able to draw air from the valve but not blow air in). I crazy glued the opening AFTER the valve was in.
When you prime the outflow for the first time, you may have to suck some air our through the check-valve to get it going.
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/4655/drillhole.jpghttp://img220.imageshack.us/img220/621/drillhole3.jpghttp://img408.imageshack.us/img408/7949/drillhole2.jpg
Time for a dry-fit test run. At this point, you can determine the desirable water line for your aquarium based on the length of the PVC pipe in the aquarium (I had to cut the length a few times to get it where I wanted it). Notice you can bend the joints to the configuration you desire. I have 2 inches of space between the water line and the absolute top of the tank. You need some space for water to at least the top of the 90 degree intake tube hole to get the syphon pressure going strong. Mine is set up to have it in the back-left corner of the aquarium eventually with the garden hose facing left as well. If you look close, water is coming our of the pipes!
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7871/dryfittest.jpg
The 3/4" PVC works fine but the biggest drawback is that the best outflow I could get was 80 Gallons per hour so a 20% change for my 100G display tank would take 15 min. It does not sound bad but if you do it each day, its noticable.
The PVC pipe size will be the hardest decision if you undertake this project. You can make the overflow with bigger PVC and it will be faster but you will have large pipes in the aquarium which do not look nice (in my opinion). The 3/4" is small but slow. As the aquarium is in my TV room, the 15 min was not a big deal to me so I stayed with this size.
One of my biggest surprises was with the mag 7 pump. It boasts a 700GPH return. I have a 20" vinyl hose attached to it and there is around 7 feet of head (2 feet to get out of the storage aquarium and 5 feet to get up the display aquarium stand and aquarium top). I knew this would slow the rate but was surprised that my testing showed only 110GPH of water flow.
So the clean water coming into the tank is 110GPH and my syphon-powered return is 80GPH. I had to slow the intake speed so I added a valve to the intake link to slow it down a bit (shown a bit later)
Next step was to PVC glue the outflow contraption after double-checking the configuration. Man does that stuff dry fast! I had about 5 seconds to move the joints in place before I could not twist them anymore!
This next step is optional. I have a royal blue background so to hide the PVC I bought some special plastic paint similar to Krylon Fusion:
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/3633/paintv.jpg
And the finished product:
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/4400/paintedy.jpg
In case you wondered, the purpose of the 90 degree on the end pipe in the water was so I could place it extremly close to the corner glass in the hopes that no fish or debris would get into the pipe.
I had some extra pipe left so I built another contraption to add onto my vynil intake hose (notice the water control valve mentioned earlier.)
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/9811/intakeinuse.jpg
Here is the finished product installed in the back of the tank. If you can not see it, good!
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/2457/intank.jpg
I could have added a timer to the mag 7 so it would auto-pump water into the aquarium but I want to be around just in case of an overflow issue. In a final step of laziness, I added quick attach connectors to my python and to the hose that refills my storage.
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/3221/python.jpg