THE FISH ROOM PROJECT - Update #4

THE FISH ROOM PROJECT

Update #4

It's been a couple of months since I last posted, but I finally have a bit of free time to relax and write about what I've been doing with my mini-fish room project. The 1" pipes really worked out well and gave me exactly the flow I need while offering me a number of plumbing options and maximizing my usage of space behind the tanks. The first drain system I installed didn't quite work out, so I tore it down and re-did everything (recycling whatever pieces I could, of course). It's too bad I didn't notice the problems that the first drain system had until after I had glued everything together and tested it, but I guess that's what a test run is all about! 

Anyway, this drain system is working out well. It's what I should have done to begin with. I don't have any pictures of my current drain and return plumbing setup for the filter yet, but I've done even better this time: I finally have a video that I can share with you now..! Here is it!

On my last post, I was debating whether to connect the vertical drain pipe from each of the tanks above to the tank directly below them. You will note that this is not wha you actually see in the video. That's because I decided to try it out, and much to my chagrin, discovered that a straight 1" tee will not function properly as a drain if there is water flowing from above into the same pipe that it connects to. Essentially, it didn't work out. I couldn't connect the drain from the top tanks directly to the drains from the bottom tanks without having a little bit of water from the top tanks flow into the bottom. That also means that the bottom tanks were not draining properly.

I could have done something like this with 2" overflows on my tanks because there is a piece (a drain tee) that is designed specifically for this sort of application (it has a curve to it that prevent water from flowing into the side outlet. However, that would have been overkill in terms of flow rate, which is not really a problem. I just designed the system with 1" overflows in mind because that's all the flow rate I needed while maximizing the space behind the tanks.

An important side not for anyone building a fish room: leave yourself enough space to work with behind the tanks. You'll be spending a great deal of time there, especially at the beginning, and you need room to work, tighten pieces, adjust, turn around, etc.

In the end, I am pretty happy with my little setup. Put simply, it works as intended. Now I have to install lighting and lids, but that should be relatively easy and not really vital to the success of the rack as a system (not yet anyway). Instead, I think I'll turn my focus to purchasing, installing, and plumbing a large water tank in the corner of the garage. I'm going to install a constant drip system for automatic water change system so I will not have to break my back with buckets, etc. and I can achieve the greatest consistency of water quality.