Want to build an overhead chamber for my heaters.

[Longshot]

I have a 150 gallon aquarium that I am in the process of setting up. I have a few pieces of 14 x 14 inch tempered glass that I have started to silicone together to form a cube, the front panel and the top panel are going to acrylic so that I can drill holes for intake and output. My plan was to mount this chamber above my tank in the canopy and install my 3 300 watt heaters. I used an online calculator to figure out that this cube will hold a max of 11.88 us gallons. I plan on building an overflow type of outlet from 3/4" PVC and let it dump back into the top of the tank. I am going to be using a large pond canister filter equipped with 13 watts of UV and I built an inline DIY Phosban reactor of 4" PVC with 3'4" in/out that I am filling with activated charcoal, just a redundancy. The canister is going to be plumbed with 3/4" PVC pipe and hose and I am going to be running 2 x 726 GPH pumps to feed the filter. I was wondering if this "heater chamber is an OK idea or if I should just build a small aquarium out it instead, lol. Thanks for your insight! I am very new to the hobby (2 years) and completely inexperienced at this innovation stuff.

[Brhino]

I've never heard of someone doing something quite like that before. Sort of like putting your heaters in the sump but above the tank rather than below it. I don't know how feasible the whole idea is - but one thing that caught my eye is that you're planning to silicone acrylic to glass. That is generally not recommended - they don't hold together very well. I have a ~2 gallon acrylic "tank" inside a glass terrarium I use for frog, and it holds water but it was a huge pain getting it together and I had to reinforce it from the outside. With your setup, I would be very worried about the seam between glass and acrylic failing, which would drain the chamber and fry your heaters.

[Cliff]

+1 to the above

I would suggest all glass. I would also like to make a few suggestions. I would suggest all glass for the construction. Drilling glass is not that hard to do and the below link will help explain it. I would also suggest using a larger pipe. a 3/4 inch gravity fed drain line will give about 400 gph. As you have three 300 wat heaters, I am guessing you have a larger set-up which would need a lot of flow going past the heaters in order to heat a large volumn of water.

You may also want to double check to make sure your canopy and tank can support the ~120 lbs of additional weight on top

I'm not trying to talk you out of this in the least

I would be interested to see this develop

[Longshot]

Thank you for the quick reply, Cliff an Brhino. You said enough to quell that notion! I am not about to blow out an 11 gallon mess over my 150 gallon tank, lol. I may not entirely give up on this idea, however. I might just buy some non-tempered glass for the top and face panels. You have given me an important piece of knowledge about the flow rate of 3/4" gravity fed. I clearly need to learn a lot about pipe and flow! I built the stand and canopy for this aquarium myself, using 2x4 framing and sheeted with 3/4 x 8 inch pine. This thing will hold up a pick up truck. The canopy is a bit lighter in construction but the wood that sits on the tank rim is 2x4 as well. This "sump-ish" box would rest on 3/4 x 8" pine cross bars a couple inches above the tank itself and be concealed by the canopy ( 18" wide x 72" long x 18" high. The rim of the tank would be bearing the brunt of the weight. The other thing is this: I am going to be running 2 x 726 GPH inline pumps to feed a UV pond filter, they will be run in parallel , so to speak, as opposed to in series and they are going to be run through a WYE fitting into a common pipe to the filter canister. I planned on using 3/4" pipe and hoses but I don't know if this setup is going to create enough GPH for proper filtration. I guess what I'm asking is if this is going to be too restrictive? Please forgive my NOOBish ignorance.

[Cliff]

Your idea can certainly work. First I would calculate the flow going into the box. You have to take the flow rate of the pump going into the box and subtract the reduction in flow caused by the hight of the line and any elbows or other fittings. I would suggest aiming for around 5 to 6 times flow, 750 to 900 gph flow through the box itself. Then you can size a good gravity feed drain. I would suggest drilling the bottom and use a 1.5 inch duriso stand pipe for some extra capasity should you want more flow later on. The below links explain a little more about aquarium plumbing basics

http://www.reefaquarium.com/2012/aqu...umbing-basics/

http://www.reefaquarium.com/2012/some-sump-basics/

And heres the link on how to drill tanks that I forgot to post earlier

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/aqua...ad.php?t=76407.

[Crispy]

if the "overhead sump" is out of sight, you could easily use a properly sized plastic tote or plastic flowerbox. one con to this method instead of a regular sump would be alot less added water volume.

[Longshot]

Being overhead and based on an overflow type of drain- is it safe to say that the extra water will be held back in case of a power outage as long as I figure the cut off level for the overflow and keep the display low enough to contain the overflow amount? The extra water volume is the only thing that kinda freaks me out being overhead. I would like to figure out how much volume I need in the overhead to heat enough water to warm the display. Is their a way to calculate the additional volume? Now that I have a few folks input on here I am all the more interested in the development of this heating chamber idea. There wont be anything else in it except the heaters. I wish I could figure out how to post pics on here I would show you guys where I'm at with the display so far and where I intend on placing the heat sump. is there an image size limit that is preventing me from posting them? On second thought let's not derail the thread- maybe a PM would be better to discuss the images.

[Cliff]

I would think the water turn over rate would be a lot more important than the actual size of the container. After all, in most sumps on larger sized tanks, the compartment that holds the heaters is typically around the size of a 5 to 10 gallon tank.

If you use a gravity feed drain thought the bottom of the compartment, the height of the drain line will determine the minimum water volume in the compartment should you have a power failure. The drain back will not be impactfull (or even noticeable) when done right. Did you get a chance to look through the links I provided in my last post ?


Make sure your pics are no larger than 800 X 800 pixels in size and you should be able to up-load them just fine.

[Longshot]

I had a chance to look at the first link, excellent source of knowledge. I thank you for the links. time to start doing some homework!

[Longshot]

a few pics of the setup I'm working with, so far.In the upper canopy is where I was looking to put the heater box, you can get an idea of what I was talking about as far as space is concerned. I am redoing the inlet and return lines with larger PVC.
[IMG][/IMG]