Why Use a Overflow Box
- Thread starter shark2
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skeeter_ca
Active member
Can you rephrase that question?
skeeter
skeeter
FranktheTankTx
New member
To keep things like snails or fish out of the drain/return pipe - thus resulting in a flood.
RocketEngineer
Space is big.
The overflow box doesn't keep stuff out. Even with fingers they still manage to get in.
The purpose of an overflow box is to pull the water from the surface of the display into the filtration. The oils/proteins in the tank concentrate at the air/water interface found on the water surface. By pulling that water into the filter, you get most of it removed from the display by the skimmer and what the skimmer doesn't pull out is then mixed back into the water for another go around.
This is why having teeth on an overflow is counter-productive and why commercial tank overflows are regarded as borderline useless. The black plastic things with the holes in the bottom have limited length. The best overflow box design is a coast-to-coast box with no teeth.
HTH,
The purpose of an overflow box is to pull the water from the surface of the display into the filtration. The oils/proteins in the tank concentrate at the air/water interface found on the water surface. By pulling that water into the filter, you get most of it removed from the display by the skimmer and what the skimmer doesn't pull out is then mixed back into the water for another go around.
This is why having teeth on an overflow is counter-productive and why commercial tank overflows are regarded as borderline useless. The black plastic things with the holes in the bottom have limited length. The best overflow box design is a coast-to-coast box with no teeth.
HTH,
shaginwagon13
Chartered Accountant
slief
RC Sponsor
You certainly can do that and it will work assuming the diameter of the stand pipe is appropriately sized for the return pump. There are advantages for using an overflow box though. First is that an overflow box provides a much larger surface space to skim the top of the water. A PVC pipe provides very little surface skimming where as a skimmer box provides a much larger surface/diameter surface skimming area. This helps immensely in not only skimming the waters surface for oils but also in removing suspended solids and organics from the display so that the skimmer can remove them. The smaller diameter stand pipe will result in more solids left in the display.
Noise can also be an issue using a standpipe for your drain. An overflow box provides options such as a durso to quiet down the drain. Personally, I prefer using my overflow as a waterfall to generate greater aeration. I don't run a Durso because of that but noise is also not an issue for me since the entire top of my main tank is drywalled in. Again, the standpipe given it's smaller diameter and surface space, doesn't necessarily provide provide as much aeration as an overflow's waterfall effect.
It's been said above in another post that the best design for an overflow is a coast to coast one without teeth. While that is true, the teeth do provide the advantage of reducing the possibility of fish going through the overflow and will also prevent some larger snails and crabs from getting in there. The same issue is presented by the stand pipe. Fish, snails and crabs can find there way into the stand pipe and cause overflows if they block it up or find there way into pumps. If you use a standpipe drain, I suggest you get some mesh screen to create a barrier to prevent things from making into the pipe.
Without a doubt, the overflow box is a far superior method for your drain then the stand pipe method. That said, on my 24"x24" display refugium, I opted to use a 1.5" stand pipe drain setup. This particular tank is a low flow setup and I wanted to conserve on space inside the tank. The standpipe was a simple solution and has worked fine for this tank. If I was running higher flow and maintaining a decent fish count in it, I would have used an overflow box but since this tank is a 2nd refugium with sea horses and other slow moving fish in mind, surface skimming volume was not very critical. For a typical fish or reef tank, the overflow box is the way to go.
This is the drain setup on my display refugium. You can see the stand pipe at the surface with the 1/4" mesh screen wrapped around it to provide a barrier to keep critters in. My seahorses actually found there way into the pipe and then into my main displays below tank refugium which prompted the mesh screen solution. You can use a strainer fitting as an alternative but they tend to get plugged up with algae.
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