What ius your prefered mesh covering material for your tank?

[city hunter]

So recently I lost a blue spot jawfish who jumped through my ehiem auto  feeder trough. Apparently yesterday my pintail wrasse decided to jump through the same thing. Honestly I have no idea how it made it that far, but it was a good 3ft from the 1.5x3 hole.

I'm done with this stupid feeder trough and wanna do a full mesh covering instead of the class one I have no with the cut around for the trough. 250 fish in a month is enough for me. It's so frustrating. Currently I've lost 2 pearly jawfish before the lid, then I lost a carpenter wrasse that broke its back jumping into the glass. He lieved about 2 weeks, but couldnt swim right, then the blue spot who made it through the feeding hole twice, and now the pintail I've had for a year 😕

Edited December 22, 2023 by city hunter

[Deuce00]

I use a redsea mesh lid works good. I lost my black head jaw fish left my lid off alittle over night. They always find a place to jump eventually. 

[obrien.david.j]

I've been building my own lids, using clear screening mesh from BRS, and window screen framing from home depot.  The challenge for me was to find a way to get them to sit on the edge of the tank.  Although not currently cheap on Amazon, I've been using this hard plastic edging (from bathroom/shower/etc businesses).   it fits very snugly over the window screen frameing, and then sits on the edge of my tank glass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Krux]

Once done finding a solution, you can put the auto feeder in the return pump chamber of your sump and it will still dose the food through the return line.

 

Not sure what your budget is, but I have really liked my ClearView lid on the RSR 350, though the wait is currently quite a while unless you have a super standard tank.  I went custom with the Pisces EXO line as I wanted to be able to run my auto feeder, add feed doors right above my MP40's for manual feeding, and also needed to have my RMS mounts properly spaced.  I believe it was about 45 days to get it from time of order. (If anyone needs a lid for a reefer 350 and wants an autofeeder/dual feed door/rms layout I got you covered as that tank is coming down!)

https://www.clearviewlids.com/pages/current-lead-time-shipping-estimates

 

I believe some people are liking tops from Kraken Reef, but I haven't seen one in person so I cant comment on the build quality.  They do not seem significantly cheaper than ClearView but the turn around time may be quicker.

 

All custom lids are expensive but so are fish, and they look intentional which has intrinsic value to some folks.  If you are handy and want a more budget method, I used the Red Sea kit on my old 170 and it was fine, but I did it with hand tools and the cuts were not perfect which bothered me.  YMMV with skill level.  Similar to the stuff linked above from BRS but with nifty red Sea logos on the corners so more expensive to achieve the same results!

 

Hope that helps.

[city hunter]

Do you get any food left in the return pump of your sump? I went with glass up top, mainly to help with some water control, but run a open sump I would have given the sump thing a try, but never even thought about how well it works. I was just going to feed on top of the mesh since the pellets fall through. I'd still have a nice carpenters wrasse most likely with mesh. I imagine it probably wouldnt have broken its back.

I use some amazon clips that clip onto the side of my rimless right now and have some super custom piece of glass I made that fits great around the trough, but not the trough itself.


I travel from work sometimes over a month at a time and have everything automated with a friend to refill my ato now and then. Main reason I went with the glass top.

I'll look into all 3 solutions. I swung by seahorse today and picked up a nice blue star leopard to replace my pintail that I have had for a year. So far the mystery wrasse and flame angel haven't harassed it much which is nice. They picked on the big pintail a bit. I was suprised it stayed out for about 45 minutes before going into the sand. I call that a win