jjwilley718
Aquarium Advice Regular
I'm getting a 75 gallon tank that is not predrilled and has tempered glass. So, I'm going to have to get a HOB overflow. What are your thoughts on these?
overflows
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Hondatek
Aquarium Advice Addict
Get a deluxe model CPR overflow. It comes with a vacuum pump to keep the syphon. I wouldn't recommend any other overflow.
jjwilley718
Aquarium Advice Regular
Yeah thats the one I was looking at. I just didn't know how they did incase of a power failure or anything like that? or if they leaked?
Hondatek
Aquarium Advice Addict
With the pump it will restart the syphon. I lost power a few times in the middle of the night and never had a mess and the tank was running fine. Just maintain the pump well and you should be good to go. I'll be replacing my pump yearly since they only cost around $20 or so for peace of mind.
I have used the 600 gph Aqualine overflow. I got it off ebay and I havent had any trouble with it. It doesnt lose its siphon if the power goes out. Here is the link to it. I hope thats ok to do.
AQUARIUM SINGLE OVERFLOW BOX W/BLUE SKIM CUP 4 NON-DRILLED TANKS/WET/DRY FILTERS | eBay
AQUARIUM SINGLE OVERFLOW BOX W/BLUE SKIM CUP 4 NON-DRILLED TANKS/WET/DRY FILTERS | eBay
tdubrow
Aquarium Advice Regular
The CPR overflow is not the best out there. If the aqualifter pump happens to fail you are looking at a huge mess. I would recommend the Lifereef hob overflow or even the eshopps one. If they are setup correctly they will never loose siphon and there is no pump necessary.
carey
Aquarium Advice Addict
I've had both an eshopps overflow and the cpr one. I have to say I like the CPR one a million times more. I have yet to have any accidents with it, and I have a backup aqualifter pump and a rebuild kit just in case.
When my power goes out like it did twice yesterday, lol, it just stops the siphon. As soon as the power comes back on it kicks in and starts the siphon again.
I had zero luck with the eshopps keeping siphon on both tubes and got tired of sucking up salt water to start the siphon. :-(
Just my two censts!
When my power goes out like it did twice yesterday, lol, it just stops the siphon. As soon as the power comes back on it kicks in and starts the siphon again.
I had zero luck with the eshopps keeping siphon on both tubes and got tired of sucking up salt water to start the siphon. :-(
Just my two censts!
techo
Aquarium Advice Activist
Hondatec what type of pump are you using???
Hondatek
Aquarium Advice Addict
Just the aqua lifter pump that comes with the overflow.
techo
Aquarium Advice Activist
My bad, I was thought you were talking about a return pump of 20 dollars :/
Rutrag
Aquarium Advice Addict
On my 75 I use two of the Marineland SOS overflow skimmers. On my 37 I use a pretty generic acrylic overflow that came paired with my wet dry filter about 15 years ago.
I chose to use two of the SOS skimmers because they were relatively cheap. I got one for $60 and the other for $40. Marineland no longer makes them as far as I know. I used two because I was fearful that with the size of return pumps I had, I would over drive one, making it noisy. The sump I have also has a place for two filter socks and I wanted to maximize the flow through each sock rather than splitting it. The good in these is that they can be tuned to be pretty quiet and each one has a back up drain in case the primary drain becomes clogged by debris or a snail or somehting of that nature. The down side is that the siphon is a little harder to start since the siphon tube is pretty flat. I can be difficult to get a piece of air line where you need it to start the siphon. I also don't think the two of mine are made exactly the same, since the one on the righ of my tank handles much more flow than the one on the left. The one on the left tends to lose siphon much more readily than the one on the right. At some point I'd like to replace the flex hose with PVC piping to see if that helps. I have had one close call where I thought I had lost siphon on both, but in reality only lost siphon on one and had it come close on the other (to the point that water was flowing, but not at a high rate of speed.) Once I lifted the siphon tube to restart the siphon, I actually broke it completely and had an overflow. That was once in an 8 month period. Before I installed an auto top off system, I lost siphon pretty regularly due to bubbles going into the tank. There was never an overflow from this because the water level was already low in the sump.
The generic overflow I have only had an issue with if there is a lot of evaporation which is not kept up on or the prefilter sponge in the overflow gets really clogged. In the case of evaporation, it's pretty easy to restart the siphon. If you miss a clogged prefilter and try to make up for it with top off water, you can overfill the tank as water won't flow through the drain as quickly.
i can say I've heard mostly good things about the CPR overflows.
I chose to use two of the SOS skimmers because they were relatively cheap. I got one for $60 and the other for $40. Marineland no longer makes them as far as I know. I used two because I was fearful that with the size of return pumps I had, I would over drive one, making it noisy. The sump I have also has a place for two filter socks and I wanted to maximize the flow through each sock rather than splitting it. The good in these is that they can be tuned to be pretty quiet and each one has a back up drain in case the primary drain becomes clogged by debris or a snail or somehting of that nature. The down side is that the siphon is a little harder to start since the siphon tube is pretty flat. I can be difficult to get a piece of air line where you need it to start the siphon. I also don't think the two of mine are made exactly the same, since the one on the righ of my tank handles much more flow than the one on the left. The one on the left tends to lose siphon much more readily than the one on the right. At some point I'd like to replace the flex hose with PVC piping to see if that helps. I have had one close call where I thought I had lost siphon on both, but in reality only lost siphon on one and had it come close on the other (to the point that water was flowing, but not at a high rate of speed.) Once I lifted the siphon tube to restart the siphon, I actually broke it completely and had an overflow. That was once in an 8 month period. Before I installed an auto top off system, I lost siphon pretty regularly due to bubbles going into the tank. There was never an overflow from this because the water level was already low in the sump.
The generic overflow I have only had an issue with if there is a lot of evaporation which is not kept up on or the prefilter sponge in the overflow gets really clogged. In the case of evaporation, it's pretty easy to restart the siphon. If you miss a clogged prefilter and try to make up for it with top off water, you can overfill the tank as water won't flow through the drain as quickly.
i can say I've heard mostly good things about the CPR overflows.
tdubrow
Aquarium Advice Regular
jjwilley718
Aquarium Advice Regular
Thank you all for the information!! It is most helpful.
jjwilley718
Aquarium Advice Regular
I have come up with another question. I'm going to get a Mag 9.5 for my return pump and now I'm going between 2 different size overflows. I don't know if I should go for the one that is rated for 800 gph or the one rated for 1200 gph. Opinions?
Hondatek
Aquarium Advice Addict
With the 9.5 you'll have to go with the 1200 gph so it will keep up unless you restrict the pump . The 1200 CPR and 9.5 is actually the same setup I have .
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