central water system thoughts/questions

[waack]

I'm not using this system anymore, but yes I went from using 25mm to 32mm overflows. The whole point of the system was to have one running at full syphon and reducing the noise and the other taking as little as possible. During power failure test, water would rise and siphon tube would start to run, then second pipe would begin taking a lot of water but until the siphon purged all the air it wasn't taking its share of the flow. After the initial 20 secs the water level drops to the same level as the second overflow and is almost a trickle through it. That being said 9/10 times the siphon started fast enough to prevent any issues

[Cermet]

Drilling each tank would be a lot of work; I'd just set up a simple siphon system for all tanks and each connected together with a single main value. That way, all could be drained at once (I built a single one for my main discus tank and it worked perfectly but was useles since vacuuming was the primary manner for me to drain the tank in order to remove waste.) Yet I learned that siphons pipe are very, very simple and I even used that system to feed clean water back into the tanks (a few extra parts - value, pipes and water mixer to set temp one time only.) If you are interested, I'll make a drawing - just used simple supplies form my local hardware store - again - a very, simple system - my siphon was designed to be primed through a removable cap if it ever lost water - occured a few times when I vacuum the tank lowered the water below its intake ... .

Also, consider an algae scrubber (in tank) instead of a sponge filter; vastly superior and will not harm fry and will reduce water changes as well as improve water quality. Unless doing near 100% w/c a day (best of all methods) this is the closest you can come to a natural system. I'd never give up my scrubber - removes not just ammonia (but will not compete with a sponge if you want to run one of those, too) but nitrates, phosphates and a host of organic substances that we can't even measure.)

[Jaster]

That would be great Cermet. The more ideas I have the better. (My wife does not agree with that though... lol)

Thans again for all the advise all!

[Cermet]

I'm at JHU right now so can't make the drawing (yes, the one that just got 1/3 billion dollars from Bloomberge! Wow, some people really have money and are really generous .)
Drilling glass always is iffy and cracks can develop so avoiding that whole issue might be worth it.

[Cermet]

Here is the drawing. The water fill/temp mixer does not need to be included. If it is, the cap fill port is not needed (the mixer will fill the siphon tube.) All parts are std 1/2 inch plastic as are the valves from Home Depot or any hardware store.

Not uploading the drawing - will have to figure this out ... .