Making a visible standpipe: A)quiet B)aesthetically pleasing C)small fish friendly

[AquaticEngineer]

So the current stand pipe on my coldwater cube tank is just that......a piece of pipe.

 

What recommendations do you all have to make it:

 

A) quiet/silent....right now it develops a whirlpool and sips quite a bit.

 

B) Look visually pleasing, its an open top tank where you can look almost straight down the stand pipe.

 

C) Not suck down any small fish, ie: Catalina Gobies etc.... but not restrict it too much?

 

Ideas?

 

Here's the tank thread:

http://www.pnwmas.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20163

 

Here's a pic of what I'm working with:

[batchelor]

can you cut the pipe down low and either 90 or 45 it to the back glass and then add an overflow box?

[reef165]

Cut it twards the bottom and use pvc fittings top get it up to a 2 or 3 inch pvc tube, use a saw and cut overflow teeth in it.

[reeferscooter]

make it look like pier pillar. The oregon coast aquarium does this and it loks cool since you are doing a cold water tank.

[AquaticEngineer]

can you cut the pipe down low and either 90 or 45 it to the back glass and then add an overflow box?

That is an awesome idea, it would actually give me much more room in the tank as well to aquascape with (clap)

 

Cut it twards the bottom and use pvc fittings top get it up to a 2 or 3 inch pvc tube' date=' use a saw and cut overflow teeth in it.[/quote']

I think I might do that in combination with the overflow box.

 

make it look like pier pillar. The oregon coast aquarium does this and it loks cool since you are doing a cold water tank.

Thats what I was originally planning to do but couldn't figure out how? I was thinking about getting a fiberglass log and cutting it to fit. But I think I'm going to try and move it to the back of the tank to get more room. I'll just build a 3 sided black overfllow box and then hide a durso in there or something.

 

Thanks for all the help guys, its always good to get a few fresh ideas and have someone else take a look at things (clap)

[Mr S]

I put gutter guard over my pipes to keep fish from being sucked down the tube.

[reeferscooter]

yea maybe use some foam on the pipe then paint or maybe hollow out an actually stick or piece of bamboo. I am sure you could find some way to seal the wood. I dont know might just be crazy thinking.

[AquaticEngineer]

I think that the cleanest look is going to be running it to the back of the tank, building an overflow surround box from the bottom up to the water surface, puting some notched teeth in the top and then adding a durso to the pipe inside the overflow box.

 

What do you guys think?

[reeferscooter]

or you could take some rock and drill a hole through them and stack them so it looks like a pinnacle. i saw a tank that had dual oveflows this way and it looked cool.

[AquaticEngineer]

or you could take some rock and drill a hole through them and stack them so it looks like a pinnacle. i saw a tank that had dual oveflows this way and it looked cool.

 

Thought about that too, but the natural rock in the coldwater tanks is pretty much granite. So its not quite so easy to drill as the tropical live rock.

[reeferscooter]

yea thats true ok one more idea i am thinking a hot glue gun and glitter... but seriously what about using some glue and sand around it. Kind of the mixed rock look you find at the coast.

[AquaticEngineer]

Ok so I have been brain storming what you all have said and I think I have come up with a plan to make this work inside my house ( wife and god permitting, they may be one in same :lol: )

 

I'm going to run a 90 degree elbow off the existing standpipe and run it do the back of the tank. I can build a black overflow box there that will surround the stand pipe and I can add a durso setup to it to reduce the noise.

 

This will allow me to do a lot of the things I want out of an indoor coldwater setup such as:

 

1)Have the auto feeder plumbed into the inside tank for all my NPS corals

 

2)Make it reasonably presentably to keep inside

 

3)Have it quiet enough to keep in the living room

 

4)Allow me to keep my Gorgonians, Strawberrys, and other really cool stuff inside where I can see them all the time

 

5)Get the plumbing ran through the wall in my living room to the garage for when I do get the money and time to build the inside setup. This will also help waste less food by having the inside tank dump into the garage 110 and then run through the filter.

 

6)It will add redundancy of two chillers on one system I can set the inside chiller to come on at 60 as the high and the larger outside on in the cooler garage to maintain the system at 58. Hopefully resulting in the inside chiller running that much less.

 

What do you guys think? It wont be a super cool custom built in badass system, but it will definately be cool.