chimera

now cracker THAT is the type of response I would expect. well put.

:roll: "seriously flawed", thats an overstatement and one that is complete and utter rubbish. note here I have not said crackers full syphon is worse or better, i still find the durso a seriously good design.

Best position for oblong shaped tanks is one at each end pointing at each other - creates a bit of random turbulence. Guess it depends on how the aquascaping has been done as well though

no next week i get it when the guy gets back from overseas

I would have no hesitation to ban you all at this point in time, give it up all of you.

MarineDepot.com, where did you order yours? Good price, works well.

no. the hole in the cap will suck air in and essentially break the syphon. without it it will keep sucking water out til the tank drains. with the hole there, the water should drop to the bottom of the horizontal section of the T plumbing. the other important part is making the cap higher than the water level in the display tank otherwise you'll lose water out through the hole!

KP - IMO the design you have illustrated will work fine. In regards to having two overflows, a second would only be required if 1. you have such excessive return flow that a single overflow could not handle it, 2. you want to add some form of redundancy incase one overflow became blocked - which in itself would be extremely rare if everything else is designed correctly. In regards to pipe size, I would personally make the smallest restriction at least 32mm, even if its a smaller tank. Reasons are two-fold, capability of handling larger flow if you upgrade your return pump plus anything that *may* get stuck in the overflow (unlikely with a decent strainer) is less likely to impact flow which could flood the tank. One thing I would point out though, is that in the design you have shown make sure the strainer you use is accessible and removeable. I have a closed loop which the outlets are small strainers made from a piece of piping with a cap and heaps of 8mm holes drilled in it. It has been in place for quite sometime and 2 of the outlets sit under my reef rack. Through the sides of my tank I can see both strainers and both have brown algae growing around them. While it is not excessive, I know one day I will probably have to clean them out which means stripping down my tank. Just as you have stated, you dont want your overflow(s) to be seen, this is also my goal when I get around to creating my new tank, basically having a more natural looking reef (in other words, having the pumps and piping required to create flow but without seeing anything ) So, in the new tank all aquascaping will be done first and the plumbing will integrate into and around it. For your tank, I would suggest designing the strainer as a 90 degree bend with a pushfit pipe that rises up the back of the tank with a cap and heaps of holes in it. You can always hide the pipe with creative rockwork. The pushfit means you can remove and clean it. Having it as long as possible means more holes and less chance of blockage.

i agree with suphew here. it seems like some simply oppose the design of the durso just because they think they found something better. the durso has been used by thousands of people to reduce noise, and most have very few issues. its a great design, but as with most things, if you dont design it correctly from scratch and dont fine tune it after installation, its little improvement than without it. the greatest noise occurs when water drops into the overflow the greatest distance. the other noise created is gurgling when the water level in the overflow rises and drops. if the durso is designed with the correct pipe size and the top of the standpipe is as close as practically possible to the top of the overflow, there will be a shorter distance for water to fall (less noise) and the correct size piping, correct size hole is used there will be no or very little gurgling noise. dont just oppose something because you think your own design is better. maybe it is better, but it doesnt make the durso a bad design. im definately using it again on my next tank. while its not completely silent, i dont even notice it. basically if you can hear your overflow overtop of the T.V. only THEN do you have a problem!

i haven't fed my CBB since i've had him (4 weeks now?) plenty of green algae in the fuge for him to eat. i'd try what pomereef says, "naturally grown algae" is what they eat.

all my torch corals are MASSIVE at the moment. start of last week they were just average size. only difference is i did 2 x 200 litre (20%) water changes one day after the other with NSW. when last did you do a WC? perhaps you should try the same and see if it makes a difference?

with the number of people asking the same question, im surprised no ones started up an LFS in wellington to be honest

that is insanely WICKED. not fair!!!

i considered (and still am) getting one of the 1,000 litre food grade containers on trademe and sitting it under my house and using it for storage. problem is getting it under my house does anyone have a large container that they collect NSW with that i could borrow? im keen on doing a 50% (about 500 litre) water change but that means 3 or 4 trips to the beach with the 8 or so buckets i have. thats a little too painful for my liking!

i bought one off trademe but the guy hasn't got back to me yet

whoa water level is high! lucky not over flowing but as soon as you get some form of water movement, you'll get a reasonable amount of salt creep down the sides

leave him in there, i dont see any problems with them unless they get excessively large. last one i found in my tank was almost a foot long :-?

oh, and a good idea steve. will look at doing something like this myself to reduce any more fish death incidents

and i counter-disagree its been at 3 times turnover for overflow throughput for a while now (since chiller went in). the single seio is in the middle and there are 2 powerheads at one end pointing along the tank - these i turned off for several weeks and noticed no difference (in fact, algae and detritus build up got worse) i dont see how flow can make any difference to the growth in pods population (unless it was *excessive*) total turnover in fuge is quite low as it is. there are those with 20-30+ times turnover in their display tanks and they have thousands of pods. interestingly, when i took the cbb out, i gave it a little shake to see if it was still alive and about half a doz pods came out of it must've been in for a feed. :-?

what did you add?

because there is bugger all flow through the fuge right now. in fact very little goes through it, only about 1,000lph from the display overflow or 3 times fuge turnover (fuge is about 300 litres) more specifically, i need some water movement because 1. there are some frags in there and 2. more flow means less build up of crud in the corners. there is much debate about how much flow your fuge should have, some say very little some say it doesnt matter. i dont really think it matters, would opt for more than less. its not like pods hang out in quiet corners of the ocean since my chiller is gravity fed from the overflow, when i turn the chiller off and "tap it off" over winter, more flow will go through the fuge. btw, why cant we edit our posts now? thats just dumb.

the plan for my new tank is to have about 1/2 to 2/3's of the rock i currently have in my display tank with a very thin layer (1/4") of sand. the fuge will have all sand removed. it'll contain all the current rock plus whats left over from the display. a couple of powerheads will then sit near the bottom of the fuge at either end and flow directed up through the rocks. a reef rack will sit over the entire area of rocks for frags. thats the plan anyway. still tossing up whether i retain some sandbed in the fuge.

:evil: found cbb dead last night. stuck to the side of a seio in the fuge. im pretty sure it is that that killed him as he was eating, was starting to get fatter and had generally looked in good health earlier that morning. he was a very small cbb though and probably not a very strong swimmer, death by seio suckulation. grrr. i am still going to get another cbb at some stage, probably one a little bigger though :-? interestingly, i have also found my BIG (6" across?) blue tang stuck to the side of my stream before, had to give him a little push to free himself. and lastly, a small blue chromis i had died about 18 months ago stuck to the side of the overflow. go figure.

or you could sell it and buy a new unit with everything integrated

differs between bulb manufacturers. personally i think its only because of the colour difference that it makes the 10k (yellow) appear brighter than the 14k (blue/white) i get much less algae under the 14k's and would definately go with them again