Ive got this wierd little tank

[wrightme43]

You made the groovy stand out of square tubing that would be the way to go if I were doing it. By the way how did you decide what size tubing to use for the size of tank. I am putting in a 240 tank for a hospitol in a fish room and want to copy what you did with the tubing. Only thing different would be triangles in the corners. I figure about 2500 lbs to be safe. Maybe pm me so we dont get off topic if you have time to talk about it. I really liked the metal stand idea. Light, functional and lots of room to work.

 

[tomz]

A couple of questions about using a "surge system" on a reef tank:

1. How would you maintain top-off water level if your sump level was changing by ~20 gallons every few minutes?

2. How would you deal with the extra flow through the overflow, would you maintain a lower water level in the tank or have an oversized overflow and would it cause a lot of noise?

Ok three questions, does anyone currently use one?

 

[dnjan]

Your topoff system would still be triggered by the lowest water level in the sump. It would basically add water just before the surge each time (until the water level in the sump was high enough to prevent the topoff from triggering). Since the topoff would only be adding water part of the time, you might need to add a bit faster than with a dosing pump.

The water level in the main tank would fluctuate some, but not a lot. Two 1" bulkheads in the surge tank wouldn't feed water that quickly (unless you mounted the surge tank near the ceiling - like an old-fashioned toilet).

The Borneman surge device comes to mind (if i remember correctly), as one of the first ones using toilet flapper valves. Don't know if he still uses it.

 

[Mauisreef]

Kevinpo is putting a 30 gal surge tank on his new 450 gal display tank at his store if I remember right. Maybe we could get his 2 cents worth on this.

Maui