easy and quiet overflow/surface skimmers

[gwaco]

when i originally built my 180 a year ago i put in a coast to coast wier type overflow . this set-up worked great and was very quiet even with a wavebox . the one thing that bugged me about it though was the fact that it took up about five inches of tank space rendering one of the t-5 bulbs basically useless . for the fourth of july i thought i would install one of the overflows as described in flys" ghettofided overflow " thread . i won't get into the fact that while removing the wier set-up , the monti cap had grown on to it so when i tried removing it i of course ended up breaking it off at the base ! so anyways i went ahead and put together a simular channel set-up as described in flys thread only to discover that (1). it was very noisy and (2) it had a very hard time keeping up with the flow . i have four 1" bulkheads set up for the drains and inorder for it to keep up i had to keep making the channel wider . i just wasn't happy with the set up at all , and i wasn't going to install the weir back in after the trouble i had getting it out . so i came up with this very inexpensive set-up that i will get into shortly ! first here are some pics of the original set-up . the plumbing in the rear of the tank remained as is .

[gwaco]

the weir

[theplatypus]

tagging along for this one

[gwaco]

here are the basic parts used in the build . the cans are made out of 3" sanitary pipe which is thin wall . this is more flexible when trying to push the connector pipe thru . i used a 1 1/4" holesaw for one inch pipe and then had to remove just alittle bit more material to get a nice tight fit . also note that i did not use any glue on any of the pieces but if your worried about any joint leaks you can glue it . just make sure you test it out before you glue it !
there is one more change i made to two of the cans that i will describe later .

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by theplatypus

tagging along for this one

i'm alittle slow so bare with me ! (watchin the race while doing this ! )

[gwaco]

here is the first step - drilling out for the connecter pipe .

[gwaco]

here is the piece with slots cut in useing a table saw . you would have to make the number of slots based on what your pump flows so do go by how many i have in the pic . some of the other ones i made have more slots in them .

[gwaco]

this is with the inner -tee installed . remember the design change i mentioned earlier ? this is where i made it . in the following pics you will see i connected a 90 degree elbow to the outside of the connecter pipe . after playing around i found it better to just connect two tees back to back. i then used a short piece of pipe on the top of the tees ( make them taller than the water level ) , i then drilled a 1" plug with a 1/4" breather hole and put it on the stand pipe .then push a piece of airline in the hole . you can use any length you want , just make sure you keep them above water level or direct them back toward the tank . this will eliminate the sound of the air being sucked in .

[gwaco]

[gwaco]

when figuring out where to put the hole into the side of the three inch pipe , as long as the tee doen't stick out passed the bottom of the 3" pipe you will be fine . when the bottom cap is pushed on you want to leave about 3/4" to 1" clearence.

[gwaco]

another note > i had to work with where my original holes were drill for the bulkheads . if i was starting bare i would have moved the bulk heads down another three to four inches . that way i could have had a piece of pipe between the elbow on the bulkhead and the 90 (or tee) . this would allow you to just cut the pipe to set your water level . in my case i had to adjust it by cutting longer slots in the 3" pipe . hope this makes sense !

[gwaco]

the cap in this pick wasn't used after i changed the design to back to back tees .

[gwaco]

and this is the final pic . now that i am happy with the way these work i will go ahead and make new cleaned up ones . also make yourself an extra one so should you need to clean them out you can pop off the dirty one , pop on the spare , clean it and replace it without having to shut anything down .
one could make a few changes to this basic design and basically "custom tune" it for your system . good luck !

[luvmylo]

Hey that ghettofied overflow is on my tank now and it works great. Keeping up with flow?? How much flow you got going on?? Not very noisy and does the trick for me.

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by luvmylo

Hey that ghettofied overflow is on my tank now and it works great. Keeping up with flow?? How much flow you got going on?? Not very noisy and does the trick for me.

i don't know why it was loud , but for me it was , and the wavebox made it worse . the cans i made here also allow me to rotate them against the back wall so they take up even less room . the rear t05 is now completely exposed which was one of my main goals .
guys don't get me wrong ! if i didn't like the channeled overflow i would not have tried it in the first place ! it just didn;t work on my tank and i'm only pushing about a 1000 g.p.h. thru it .