Shan's First Discus Journey

[danotaylor]

Shan how's about an update vid on your discus? It's been a hot second or 2

[Shan_Evolved]

Soon! This week is a little busy but I will definitely update video!

[Shan_Evolved]

Practiced drilling on a old cracked 10 gal. Great success!

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[Iminit]

Congrats!! Hole looks good!! Now was that just a drill bit and a drill. Or is there a rig to do it with?

[Shan_Evolved]

A rig I constructed. A hole in a piece of plywood as the pilot and then the drillbit to guide with water cooling during! Easy peasy. I'll do the 125 after I get my overflow figured out

[dnkn]

Nice jobe Shan. A 125G is less scary to drill than a 10G because the glass is so much thicker. If you can drill a 10G with probably 1/8" plate without cracking it, the 125 will be easy. It just takes longer.

[FischAutoTechGarten]

A rig I constructed. A hole in a piece of plywood as the pilot and then the drillbit to guide with water cooling during! Easy peasy. I'll do the 125 after I get my overflow figured out

Clamping a Jig is key! This year I drilled 32 holes.... only broke one.... that's when I free-handed it without my jig and clamps... over confidence.

[Shan_Evolved]

Can I get some opinions on an overflow like this?

https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/eclip...h-eshopps.html

Instead of drilling 3 holes I would only need to drill 2. And it seems slicker. Anyone experience noise level? 600gph flow is more than enough right?

Edit. Decided to aim for 800-1000gph turnover rate so I would need a bigger overflow box. The reason I liked this design is the sleekness. A bit pricey though.

[AquaticNerd]

If you're aiming for 1000gph turnover (max), you can upgrade to the largest size box they make, if you wanted - https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/eclip...h-eshopps.html

I've found that it's really difficult to get noise under control using a herbie-style system. Granted, it is much better than what my aquarium originally came with (a pair of Maggie Mufflers) with standpipes. One mistake I made was that I didn't originally start with the herbie-system, but the system that came with my aquarium, where both standpipes connect together at the sump entrance. This creates a lot of noise from one standpipe and when the water enters the sump since it's mixing with air and "gurgling".

I recently tried to get the sound quieter by switching to a herbie-style drain where one drain is fully submerged and the other has a light trickle. This is where my second mistake came into play - I didn't use a gate valve, but a standard ball valve. The ball value is difficult to get tuned just right. I was able to get the sound down quite a bit. I don't hear it from the next room over anymore, which sometimes makes me worry and I have to go check to make sure it's still running lol. A gate valve would have made all of the difference in allowing me to tune it "just right".

What I like about the larger overflow is that it has 3 bulkheads for output to your sump - this allows for the bean-animal style which I have seen some folks be able to get nearly silent. And you don't have to run the overflow at the maximum flow that it can handle - it's an upper bound and not a hard limit. What I'm trying to get at here is this - if your aim is for low noise, get the larger one with 3 drains and create it bean-animal style (with gate valves!).

As far as turnover rate is concerned, I don't typically pay attention to it. With a sump, I aim somewhere in the 3-5 times per hour range. For your 125, that would be 375-625 GPH. You're going to want a pump that is rated for probably 1000 GPH due to head pressure. If you're using an AC pump (i.e. one speed), you can add a gate valve on the return to introduce "artificial" head pressure to reduce the flow if it's too much. If you're using a DC pump, it should be able to be controlled fairly easily. But like I said, personally, I care more about water movement inside the aquarium than I do "turnover" (i.e. how much goes through my sump).

[Shan_Evolved]

Thanks Jake good insight. Things I've picked up on correct me if Im wrong -

-Use a high quality gate valve in conjuction with main drain being submerged and the emergency being a trickle.

-Aim for 3-5x the turnover rate (so I would be sufficient getting a 900gph overflow box)?

-DC pump with at least 1000gph (duh!)


Some questions and concerned rising while I'm researching around -

I understand fully that the bean animal style is the best of the best, but I myself have not ever had a sump or worked with it, so just out of curiosity I would like to start with the herbie style. In the future I may upgrade if I wanted to. But I would at least like to start with herbie just to experience it.

On the subject of herbie, do the holes need to be drilled low enough on the back pane that you can get at least 6" of clearance between the 2 drains?

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Also, I see these shadow type overflows like the one below do not have 6" of clearance. Also from reading, people say that there's a lot of noise coming from the water draining through the bulkhead before going into the drain.

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[Iminit]

Ok here’s what I don’t get. For this system you still need an inside the tank flow box and an outside box. Why not just use a hang over box with a tube? Why drill holes? I thought you drill holes to avoid these boxes and you went directly into the sump.

[Shan_Evolved]

Ok here’s what I don’t get. For this system you still need an inside the tank flow box and an outside box. Why not just use a hang over box with a tube? Why drill holes? I thought you drill holes to avoid these boxes and you went directly into the sump.

Not as reliable and risk of flooding from what I've read. And with the numerous water changes It would be a pain to resiphon

[AquaticNerd]

Shan - you've nailed the main points. Looking at plumbing and overflows, BRS has a nice video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1tAnhIGpgA

To address your question - I believe if you get the eshopps 600 or 800 overflow box (typically what you see called "shadow box"), it is already set up for the herbie style. If you go looking at the 600 model you linked to and look at the image, you have the main drain (bulkhead with no PVC pipe), which would have a high quality gate valve that you can use to tune the overflow. The second "emergency drain" is the one that has PVC in it. That should provide you more than the 6" difference. If you notice in the image, the top of the PVC pipe is well above the entire bulkhead that would allow water through. Then, it's simply a matter of tuning the main drain's gate valve to restrict flow just enough to where water barely trickles down the emergency overflow. This would set the water level above the flow-through bulkhead, thus not creating any noise from the flow of the water through the bulkhead and reduce the noise of water passing through the weir. The eshopps overflow comes with a drilling guide that you can use to drill the aquarium. Someone in the reviews section provided some good insight if the aquarium is rimmed, quoted below. This is some solid advice.

I bought this overflow for my 40 gallon breeder tank. It comes with everything you need. Diamond drill bit, stencil to determine where to drill, and the overflow itself including the bulkheads. One note to make, its best on a rimmed tank to put the stencil on the inside of the tank and drill from the inside out. Otherwise your water level will be to low. It works great, its extremely quiet.

The idea the person quoted is simple - you want the overflow box that is inside your aquarium to be as close to the top of the aquarium as possible.

You are correct though, with the particular image that you shared with the text, there is a high likelihood that that particular overflow / shadow box design is a poor one. This is because the flow-through bulkhead is so high that you wouldn't typically be able to appropriately tune the drain(s) so that the water level covers the flow-through bulkhead. Notice the height of the box on the inside of the aquarium is the same as the outside in the image vs. the eshopps model which is lower. This allows the standpipe to stand well above the top of the bulkhead and keep the water level above it. In the image above, I would be nervous tuning a main drain with an emergency drain since that flow-through bulkhead is already so close to the top rim. I would be afraid of potential spillage. This wouldn't be the case with the eshopps one.

Tom - you make a good point. There are overflow boxes that do just hang over a tank rather than requiring drilling. The main drawback here is that on HOB overflows, you're relying solely on the effect of the siphon to handle water movement. If you were to ever lose power, those siphons are sometimes hard to re-establish without manual intervention. There are some models that have ways around it (i.e. with an airpump), but even sometimes those don't correct themselves. Drilling through the aquarium is the only way to guarantee that your drain will start properly without flooding your house after a power outage.

[Shan_Evolved]

I am getting closer and closer to settling on the Eclipse M Overflow Box.

Will do some more research and investigate the water line issue with these types of overflows

[AquaticNerd]

The images that I've found seem to be a little deceptive. The ones at BRS are zoomed out without being able to zoom in, so I went poking around and found it listed here: https://www.marinedepot.com/eshopps-...-box-eclipse-m

It seems like the included PVC for the inside of the box does extend up past the top of the flow-through bulkhead. This would alleviate any issue of noise going through there. Same principle as not being able to hear water moving through your home's water supply unless you're at the source where the water is mixing with air. Since the water line is above the bulkhead, you wouldn't hear it make any noise.

If you do go the eshopps route and since you've got a spare 10 gallon, you can always give it a shot on that one first so you can test out the drilling to understand the placement. If the cracked 10 gal can still hold water well enough - you can also do a test fill to get a feel for how the water fill flow. You can always test outside with dry-fitting so you don't have to worry about leaks, and you can test dry fitting a gate valve on the main drain to understand how to tune the overflow when the time comes.

Tuning is pretty simple. The way I did it was fairly straightforward. Leave the gate valve wide open and allow the water level to settle. Then ever so slightly begin closing it until you've just got it barely trickling down the emergency one. Just don't do the dumb thing I did and tie both drains in together at the sump and leave them separate.