... continued
I ordered 65lbs of the BRS reef saver dry rock and started planning the aquascaping. I threw some masking tape of the floor to outline the tank and used 1/2" OD PVC to make a basic structure. I wanted to create structures the fish could swim entirely around providing a bit more surface area to graze on. I wanted to incorporate the rule of thirds into the structure and I want to split the structure to help create the illusion of depth. The small diameter PVC was really easy to work with and helped me better visualize everything.
Enter one year hiatus and the aforementioned move here
It was finally time to start working on plumbing! I had ordered red furniture grave PVC about a year prior along with the matching white fittings to give an otherwise nice appearance to what typically ends up rather unsightly in my setups. This time I vowed to keep it clean, simple, and functional. After some mock-up, I started cementing things in place; I wanted to keep the straightest, most vertical path possible in an effort to maximize flow since I was using smaller diameter PVC at 3/4".
Now when I say maximize flow, it only counts on the drain side. I'm a symetrical kind of guy and I had plenty of pump for the return side of things.
The business end of the overflow was a very tight fit and I was a bit concerned things wouldnt quite work as intended. Thankfully I was wrong and with a bit of tuning, everything worked out perfectly.
The water level inside the tank was spot on! There were no leaks in the plumbing and everything was working pretty well. I removed the pre-filter to do some tuning of the main and open channels.
Once dialed in, I replaced the extension tubes and everything was operating pretty smoothly. The overflow box was a bit noisy from the water cascading from the inner chamber to the outer so I started working on a solution to that. I had to slow the return pump down quite and bit and subsequently, close the open channel down quite a bit. In the end, the overflow box was almost dead silent and the loudest part of the entire setup was the return pump.
It was time for aquascaping and sand; total master piece, right?
