Drilling Tank - Hole placement?

GoldStripe

New member
I'm getting ready to drill my non reef ready 150 and thought I'd throw this question out there. I'm going to have 2 1.5" drains and I'm contemplating how far down and how far in from the edge to drill the holes. I think the general rule of thumb is to stay away from any edge by at least the diameter of the hole. From my bulkhead I'm planning on having a 90 facing up with a short length of pipe slipped into it that I can cut to determine water level. Any suggestions on this hole placement would be greatly appreciated.

I'm also drilling two 1.5" holes for my CL intake further down the tank and 2 1" (1.75" holes) for 2 of the CL returns. The placement on those is not critical for anything other than asthetics however.

Thanks,
Dan
 
I have been working on the deaign of my plumbing for the exact same reason.
I can't order my tank until I can come out with an exact layout of the holes. Check out my thread on Critique my latest 215 design.
 
Great job on the layout so far reefkeepa. Your situation is a little different in regards to your drains. I'm going through the back wall of the tank rather than up through the bottom. I won't have a true overflow in each corner of tank, purposely. It will be just a bulkhead near the top of the tank with a 90 aimed up toward the surface.

This will be the initial design, if it proves inefficient or noisy, it will be changed.
 
Just be sure that you drill your drains high enough so that sand (if you are going with a DSB) won't get drawn in the drains.
 
oh yeah they'll be plenty high enough. I'm thinking I'm only going to come down 3-4" from the top edge of the tank. I'm just wondering if that's appropriate.
 
For aesthetic reasons, personally I would put them low enough so that you can hide the drains with rock work. All of my equipment is located in the basement, and I didn't want anything showing in the display, so I made sure that the drains and returns were in a position that they could be hidden by the rock work.
 
I agree for aesthetic reasons however, if the bulkhead is halfway down and I have to have a length of pvc to get back up to skim the surface there isn't a big difference there I don't think. Maybe I'm not understanding something here?
 
If you get the chance, search here for Calfo Overflow. There are some great threads using holes near the top of the tank and a long shallow overflow box along the entire rear wall fo the tank.
 
Thanks brackish, I'll have to try the search early tomorrow morning for that. I was going to try and just use 90's to avoid having any box but I doubt that it will work that well, even if I step up to 2" 90's. I wonder what the linear area is on a 2" 90 or maybe even a 3"?? Hmmmm
 
Thank you very much!! I've got some reading to do now. What does everyone think about NOT using the box but just a PVC 90 to skim the surface?
 
That's what I was afraid of. As a way to combat this, I was thinking of using standpipes on outside of the tank (T'ing off the bulkhead with a cap with a hole in it up top and the drain on the bottom of the T) I haven't seen it done yet.
 
haha, i have it set up the way you are talking about, at least i think so, my bulkhead is 3 inches from the top with an elbow to surface skim. only problem that i've had was clogging once... (didn't flood, caught it in time) just make sure your return pump isn't too strong because at that height you have a problem since there is less gravity feed. so only thing i would change would be adding a second drain. but it works well.
 
tptp279, thanks for the info!! I do plan on having two of them. However, my return pump is an Iwaki MD 70 which is rated 1500 GPH @ 4' of head. The more I read and the more I think about it, I may just go with a narrow box across the entire back glass using smoked glass. But I can always try it my original way first.

How noisy is yours? Do the standpipes quiet it down a bunch?
 
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