JaminRat
Fish Crazy
Hi guys
Been messing with my setup over the past week and thought I'd share. The tank is a 70L nano but was beginning to overwhelmed with equipment so I decided a retro-fit sump was the order of the day.
I built a glass weir from 4mm float glass which I cut myself. I have a fair bit of experience cutting thinner glass as it's part of my job but have never tried 4mm or 6mm and man it's tough stuff to break
Got there in the end a saved a few £'s in the process. The way the pricing worked each piece of glass cut was £2.20 so for the 4 pieces for the weir I was looking at £8.80 whereas 1 piece 300mmx300mm was still £2.20 and gave me more then enough for my weir with loads left to practise drilling.
I also siliconed some dividers into an old tank to make a sump and left it all to cure for 24 hours.
Next step was to drill the tank
real brown trouser moment. Drill 2 trial holes in some offcuts the first wasn't great but the second was much better. So I went for it 
I drained the water level down and began drilling lots of water, lots of patience and 2 batteries later it was all over and I had a perfect hole Real easy job which is within almost any body's skill. If you've used a drill before and have read a few of the guides on the web it really is a breeze.
Next up I fitted the bulkhead and siliconed the weir in place and left the whole lot to go off for another 24hrs. Meanwhile I sorted all the pipework ready to go.
Moved the equipment to the sump filed everything with water fix the slight leak and the plumbing and turned it all on and to great surprise it worked. Felt a little like Frankenstein and his monster at this point cos although everything worked it was noisy as hell. So loud in fact it drowned out the TV
So at this point the better half is not impressed but I had a plan. I planned the plumbing quite well so had a few tricks to try.
The first problem was the return pump was flowing more than the overflow could cope with. No problem I had T'd off the return so just diverted a little of the return back into the sump problem solved.
Next problem the noise had 2 tricks for this one. I fitted a ballvalve in the drain so backed this off but could not balance it so that there was little noise but still flowed enough water to stop the level rising. So throttled back the drain as best I could airing on the side of caution and then came trick 2. Drilled a small hole in the top of the capped plumbing to allow some air in. This quietened it a great deal but still had gurgling and the such so I had reached a stale mate. I had opened the hole up to 6mm gradually with no real success so where to now.
I had a trawl through the net and found something called the airline trick. All this in-tales is stuffing some airline through the hole you have made down to the sump and gradually pulling it out. Aha I thought it can't be that simple
Despite this I gave it a go. Started threading the airline down the hole and then, bang, complete silence. So simple but so effective.
I'm now really happy with it. So what did I learn.
Cutting glass yourself is simple just make sure you have extra just in case.
Drilling glass is even easier than cutting the stuff. Who'd of thought it
Fore-planning saves a lot of problems.
Research is the key. Even though I thought I had covered all the bases I hadn't.
There is a lot of really useful info on these forums without which I would be up sh!t creek without a paddle still.
Thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge and helping idiots like me understand quite advanced concepts.
Been messing with my setup over the past week and thought I'd share. The tank is a 70L nano but was beginning to overwhelmed with equipment so I decided a retro-fit sump was the order of the day.
I built a glass weir from 4mm float glass which I cut myself. I have a fair bit of experience cutting thinner glass as it's part of my job but have never tried 4mm or 6mm and man it's tough stuff to break
Got there in the end a saved a few £'s in the process. The way the pricing worked each piece of glass cut was £2.20 so for the 4 pieces for the weir I was looking at £8.80 whereas 1 piece 300mmx300mm was still £2.20 and gave me more then enough for my weir with loads left to practise drilling.I also siliconed some dividers into an old tank to make a sump and left it all to cure for 24 hours.
Next step was to drill the tank
real brown trouser moment. Drill 2 trial holes in some offcuts the first wasn't great but the second was much better. So I went for it I drained the water level down and began drilling lots of water, lots of patience and 2 batteries later it was all over and I had a perfect hole Real easy job which is within almost any body's skill. If you've used a drill before and have read a few of the guides on the web it really is a breeze.Next up I fitted the bulkhead and siliconed the weir in place and left the whole lot to go off for another 24hrs. Meanwhile I sorted all the pipework ready to go.
Moved the equipment to the sump filed everything with water fix the slight leak and the plumbing and turned it all on and to great surprise it worked. Felt a little like Frankenstein and his monster at this point cos although everything worked it was noisy as hell. So loud in fact it drowned out the TV
So at this point the better half is not impressed but I had a plan. I planned the plumbing quite well so had a few tricks to try.The first problem was the return pump was flowing more than the overflow could cope with. No problem I had T'd off the return so just diverted a little of the return back into the sump problem solved.
Next problem the noise had 2 tricks for this one. I fitted a ballvalve in the drain so backed this off but could not balance it so that there was little noise but still flowed enough water to stop the level rising. So throttled back the drain as best I could airing on the side of caution and then came trick 2. Drilled a small hole in the top of the capped plumbing to allow some air in. This quietened it a great deal but still had gurgling and the such so I had reached a stale mate. I had opened the hole up to 6mm gradually with no real success so where to now.
I had a trawl through the net and found something called the airline trick. All this in-tales is stuffing some airline through the hole you have made down to the sump and gradually pulling it out. Aha I thought it can't be that simple
Despite this I gave it a go. Started threading the airline down the hole and then, bang, complete silence. So simple but so effective.I'm now really happy with it. So what did I learn.
Cutting glass yourself is simple just make sure you have extra just in case.
Drilling glass is even easier than cutting the stuff. Who'd of thought it
Fore-planning saves a lot of problems.
Research is the key. Even though I thought I had covered all the bases I hadn't.
There is a lot of really useful info on these forums without which I would be up sh!t creek without a paddle still.
Thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge and helping idiots like me understand quite advanced concepts.
