teeth on overflow too big...any ideas?

[macawmagic]

the teeth on my overflow are about 1.5 inches big. I really only need them to be about .75 inches. any ideas on how I could make them smaller. It's an acrylic tank. about 20 slits that need to be smaller. I'm trying to get water in the tank tonight or tomorrow so quick ideas would be greatly appreciated.

right now i'm thinking silicon, but don't remember which one at HD is reefsafe. could someone tell me that?

any other ideas?

 

[pedromatic]

Do you mean that the overflow is not adjustable and you want to raise the water level by obstructing the bottom of the teeth .5 in?
Remember the water level is going to be a little higher than the bottom of the teeth because it has to spill over and is restricted by the size of the gaps.

 

[macawmagic]

no i know. i had this tank setup before, and with the same amount of water I'll be flowing through it, it only used about .5 of the 1.5 inches of slices... so I want to raise that up a little so the water level is higher in the tank. any ideas? i was also thinking superglue, but that would be too many tubes of superglue...what about hot glue? reef safe?

 

[coralfragger101]

How about glueing a strip of thin black ABS plastic sheeting across the bottom. Black would blend in with the overflow and give you a nice clean top edge.

 

[macawmagic]

what's abs plastic sheeting? just like acrylic?

 

[coralfragger101]

Very similar. I looked for a piece of scrap laying around but I guess I threw out the extra I had. It's thin so it will bend to the shape of the overflow. It is reef safe. You can get it at Prospect Plastics. You might even be able to talk them out of just a scrap piece. I raid there garbage can for acrylic scraps every time I go down there.

I'll post you a pic of the stuff in a sec

 

[coralfragger101]

Here ya go. You can get ABS thick. Good for sump tops as acrylic will bow. This is thin.

Below, you can see that you can bend it as well.

 

[macawmagic]

silicon or hot glue? I've gotta get it done today if I'm going to do it, and don't have time to drive up to that plastic store.

also if silicon...is it the window 1 or window 2 silicon that is safe for the tank?

 

[illal]

i belive is #1... but its what ever one doesnt have that bioseal thing for mold protection

 

[coralfragger101]

So what did you end up doing?

 

[macawmagic]

nothing yet...still trying to get it plumbed up...i ended up cutting a pvc pipe almost in half and glueing the short (wrong one) in. now i'm cutting out a bunch of stuff so that I could replace all the glued wrongness...I gotta get this tank running before i got to bed tonight as i've got school tomorrow morning and then will be leaving straight to orlando. I might have to drain the tank and fix the teeth later. right now i just gotta get it running! lol