Hello all,
I need some help with my above tank fuge. The basic set up is that I took a cheapo 5 gallon desktop aquarium I had laying around the house and drilled it for return and drain lines similar to a HOB fuge.
The whole thing sits a few inches above and to the side of my display thank, but the distance between the pump and the bulkhead is a rise of about 2 feet with a run of about 4 feet. The problem I'm having is that the pump (minijet 606) pushes water in a little bit faster than it drains out. The kind of odd part though is that the water level builds until it forms a true siphon and then pulls the water from the tank faster than the pump can push it in until the siphon breaks, thus draining the tank in one fell surge. At first this was pretty cool (aside from the flushing sound that makes my wife giggle). The problem is the amount of micro bubbles this flushing is creating.
So far I've come up with three ideas of how I might be able to reduce the bubbles and still get the benefits of the surge without the bubbles. The first idea is the simplest, just a ball valve on the input side to try and reduce the flow to keep it from building up to the flush. The second idea is to install an overflow baffle in the fuge itself to limit the amount of the flush (right now it pushes out about an inch of water from the fuge). The final idea is to take something like one of the long smart water bottles, drill some holes in the curve at the upper part to allow air to escape and either have no bottem, or a few openings around the bottem to allow the water, pods, etc to escape.
Anyway, I could use a little feed back from you DIY gurus as this is my first real attempt at anything like this. Thanks!
I need some help with my above tank fuge. The basic set up is that I took a cheapo 5 gallon desktop aquarium I had laying around the house and drilled it for return and drain lines similar to a HOB fuge.
The whole thing sits a few inches above and to the side of my display thank, but the distance between the pump and the bulkhead is a rise of about 2 feet with a run of about 4 feet. The problem I'm having is that the pump (minijet 606) pushes water in a little bit faster than it drains out. The kind of odd part though is that the water level builds until it forms a true siphon and then pulls the water from the tank faster than the pump can push it in until the siphon breaks, thus draining the tank in one fell surge. At first this was pretty cool (aside from the flushing sound that makes my wife giggle). The problem is the amount of micro bubbles this flushing is creating.
So far I've come up with three ideas of how I might be able to reduce the bubbles and still get the benefits of the surge without the bubbles. The first idea is the simplest, just a ball valve on the input side to try and reduce the flow to keep it from building up to the flush. The second idea is to install an overflow baffle in the fuge itself to limit the amount of the flush (right now it pushes out about an inch of water from the fuge). The final idea is to take something like one of the long smart water bottles, drill some holes in the curve at the upper part to allow air to escape and either have no bottem, or a few openings around the bottem to allow the water, pods, etc to escape.
Anyway, I could use a little feed back from you DIY gurus as this is my first real attempt at anything like this. Thanks!
