hovmoller

Yeah I thought hard about this but with a small hole it will just suck the container empty really fast and get lots of air into the outlet then maybe suck it empty again and repeat etc... I think the canister would get too much air pretty quickly like this and stop. The last container I made works very well. I now have a sparkling clean surface!

That must be 4 seriously tough boys!!! :slfg:

Ok that was the prototype.. This is the final result: Used an old plastic filter cadridge thingy. Two small holes drilled for two small suction cups so skimmer can sit in tank corner. Made two vertical slits 70x8mm each down the side of the container. Extended outlet pipe a little so it draws water from bottom of container. This works very well. With the two long vertical slits there is a very big tolerance and I can move the container up or down in around a 30mm range to adjust how strongly I want the flow into the container to be. If the water level were to drop say 20mm (which is extremely unlikely... unless my wife and I died and no one found us for 2 months) all that would happen is that level inside the container would drop further and the water would then just flow quicker into the container. I have two canisters on this tank. One drawing water from other corner at the bottom and this one skimming the surface.. perfect!

Ah.. a question for you then: When you have an overflow (like you have) do you get a lot of surface crap build up there or does the fall of water into the overflow get rid of that so it sucks out the stand pipe? Or asking in another way: If the fall into the overflow is very small would you get too much surface crap build up?

Yeah it takes some adjusting but I think the ideal is an oval or rectangular vertical opening where the water flows through. This way there is quite a tolerance in the setting so as when the outlet lowers the level in the jar the water just pours in that much faster to compensate.

Though the surface of my tank was filthy so thought of a way to make a surface skimmer. Not much to it and this may be an old idea but thought I'd share anyway. Here's the result: It's more of a proof of concept jar at the moment.. might make a nicer one later. So it's just an old mayo jar attached in the corner of the tank with suction cups. Outlet pipe to canister filter takes water from bottom of jar. Large hole cut out of side of jar and jar adjusted in height so that water pours into jar Crap from surface gathers inside jar and because of the turbulent water is eventually pulled down and sucked through the outlet. Have only just installed it so I have no sparkling clean surface as proof yet but I can see it working fine. Voila! very simple and best of all FREE!!

Smidey I think I understand your concern about there being a great distance between the two end shear bracing panels (the ply) but you have to remember also that there is also ply on top that acts as shear bracing to prevent the middle from buckling out.. I completely stand by my first statement that this stand will be more than fine. Having just looked at that picture again I would like to ask jasonnz: The ply looks to be fixed with very few fixings? looks like 1 per side!!!!!!! Could you tell us how many fixings are used to fasten the ply? (at what centers)

This will be fine Looking forward to the pics!

:sml1: Yeah better call Henward (aka The Light Police)

Oh and a newb viv question: how do you avoid condensation on the the inside of the vivarium?

!drool: You have inspired me and I think a lot of other people on this forum with your Vivarium! Thank you for the awesome build thread

Beam me up Scotty!

Well if you bring that discussion over here you might get banned here too! I know you like a "harty" discussion but you did call a guy stupid :slfg:

Does anyone out there have some of these now? I think you had bad luck with yours David?

Hey now that's a good idea! Or maybe that dye that is injected into the fish like they do on some tetras and other small fish! :thup:

I know what you mean but it's not exactly very scientific to compare a pond to a tank and say that sunlight is the only difference that could affect fish colour. :slfg: Henward why don't you install one of those Solar Tubes in your shed to shine sunlight directly on top of Brutus?

Love your work on the background.. looks great! As many have said before: The fruit salad gravel spoils it for me too. (just an opinion)

I insulate my tanks with 25mm polystyrene on as many sides as is practical (those I don't need to see through). From experiments that saves me half the power on heating. I set tank temps to the lower part of the fish temp range e.g. if for a fish the recommended temp is 25-28 then I set the temp to 25.. The fish wont be any happier if I had set it to 27. For light I have just recently bought LEDs which are very cheap to run but expensive units though.

Good link. cheers! :thup:

It's not plastics fault... and it is not horrible... Plastic is a great material and there are lots of nice plastics around that are biodegradable and plastics are really good at sealing stuff so we can keep it longer. Where would you and your fish tank be if you could not use plastic? It's the handling that is the problem.. yes it's terrible now but I think one day we'll get it mostly right.

Did u see my previous post? Could be your room gets a bit too cold sometimes :dunno:

Ok.. So if the temp in your room were to reach 14dC and your tank is 27dC you would need a theoretical 316Watts (continuous) to keep that temperature in the tank. That is assuming 10mm poly and 12mm ply under both tank and sump. Of course that does not include any added heating from pump, lights, etc. I chose 14dC because that is when your 300W heater will no longer be enough. If you were to put 25mm poly on rear and sides of your tank and on all 4 sides of your sump, your power consumption at that temp difference would drop from 316W to 181W.

For an eheim I don't think so... does it get very cold in the room? are you using poly? Why don't you give me your tank & sump dims, the temp you want tank at and min temp you think the room will get and I'll run it through my heatloss calc.?

YES!! Shortened and hot dip galvanised!!! NICE! Managed to get the stand and tank into the room yesterday... had to rotate the tank to lie on its front to get through the door but now it's in there and it's the perfect size for that room. Just need to fiddle with all the plumbing bits now.. :digH: Hope you keep your Leucos.. mine are getting quite big now. Probably just a tad bigger than yours and showing some awesome speckeled colours and some are showing fin extensions too. When big boy (alifrons male) is moved to the 800L I'll start adding leaves for the Leucos to play with :slfg: Found this pic from Japes with leaves that is awesome: How can you say no to these guys: And this is the one with the Lemons I rememebered:

Why are you giving up on the Leucos so soon? :dunno: