I've been playing around with a few things the past couple of weeks and decided to try and upgrade a couple of 10 Gallon tanks that I was using as isolation tanks for some species I could not add to my reef display. I was originally planning on breaking them down once I could acclimate the fish in to my other tanks but they sort have taken a life of their own now and I have had them running for about six months now. The problem with these small tanks is that I have to do constant water changes and top offs to keep the water quality high. I also wanted to try my hand at plumbing and drilling some tanks, so I thought a fun project would be to daisy chain the three 10G tanks, using the bottom tank as a sump, and there by increasing the volume of water to 30G.
At this point, I have drilled two of the tanks and have a third tank that I have a plexiglass overflow baffle glued in place for a refugium / return sump in place. The other concern I had (from experience with my frag tanks) is the problem of air bubbles as the overflow from the tank above cascades in to the tank below. I have been experimenting with using some unused HOB filters as the receptacle for the overflow and using a filter bad to 1) trap debris and 2) eliminate the bubbles. It worked well on my test set up so I'm anxious to see how it works when I plumb every thing together. My next step is to swap out one of the existing 10G tanks, and plumb in to the sump then move the existing rock, crabs and snails to the new tank. I also picked up a skimmer from Tim that I am using on this set up now and the best part is that I can now add a top off to the set up to keep things more stable. I'll post some pics of the current setup and some of the build shots when I get some.
Bob
At this point, I have drilled two of the tanks and have a third tank that I have a plexiglass overflow baffle glued in place for a refugium / return sump in place. The other concern I had (from experience with my frag tanks) is the problem of air bubbles as the overflow from the tank above cascades in to the tank below. I have been experimenting with using some unused HOB filters as the receptacle for the overflow and using a filter bad to 1) trap debris and 2) eliminate the bubbles. It worked well on my test set up so I'm anxious to see how it works when I plumb every thing together. My next step is to swap out one of the existing 10G tanks, and plumb in to the sump then move the existing rock, crabs and snails to the new tank. I also picked up a skimmer from Tim that I am using on this set up now and the best part is that I can now add a top off to the set up to keep things more stable. I'll post some pics of the current setup and some of the build shots when I get some.
Bob
