chriscoli
Administrator
I've been doing a LOT of research on where the best place to drill for a bulkhead fitting to implement semi-automatic waterchanges. It seems to me that there are a few options, each with pluses and minuses. I'm leaning toward option #4, but I wanted to know if there were other options. What do you use?
1.) Drill high, at the waterline. This seems simplest but also most restrictive. Especially if doing semi-automatic waterchanges, you have to use a lot more water to achieve the same percent waterchange as you would if you just manually drained the tank and refilled it since some of the new water would go out with the old in an automatic system. Also, it's not as flexible if you decide you need to change the height of your waterline for some reason.
2.) Drill low on the side or at the bottom with standpipe. This would allow you to use a standpipe to determine the water level and could be handy to do large waterchanges (just pull out the standpipe). I'm also worried about fussing with removing/replacing the standpipe frequently. It seems like it would be a risk to put stress on the bulkhead that frequently. Also, what if the standpipe has a slow leak?
3.) Drill low on the side or at the bottom with external ball valve. This would allow you to also do large waterchanges, but would not have an overflow feature if you stepped away from the tank during a refill, taking away the "automatic" nature of the waterchange. There are some that also worry about having stagnant water sitting between the bulkhead and ball valve.
4.) Drill a little bit low with moveable overflow. Just like Larry presented in his talk at this year's BFD. Basically, he has two street ells put together and they rotate in the bulkhead. In the "up" position, it sets the waterlevel and allows overflow of excess refill water if one tank fills before the rest are done. in the "down" (horizontal) position, it causes the tank to drain to that level. When done, you'd return it to the up position and turn on the refill. This one would also put occasional stress on the bulkhead and might be subject to a slow leak. But because it's not near the bottom, if a tank did slowly drain, at least there should be enough left to keep the fish safe. This one also limits the size of your waterchange to the amount of water able to be drained in the down position.
5.) undrilled with siphon overflows. I've tried a few of these and they work great for a little while, but then it seems one always fails on me at the worst possible time. I don't trust them.
1.) Drill high, at the waterline. This seems simplest but also most restrictive. Especially if doing semi-automatic waterchanges, you have to use a lot more water to achieve the same percent waterchange as you would if you just manually drained the tank and refilled it since some of the new water would go out with the old in an automatic system. Also, it's not as flexible if you decide you need to change the height of your waterline for some reason.
2.) Drill low on the side or at the bottom with standpipe. This would allow you to use a standpipe to determine the water level and could be handy to do large waterchanges (just pull out the standpipe). I'm also worried about fussing with removing/replacing the standpipe frequently. It seems like it would be a risk to put stress on the bulkhead that frequently. Also, what if the standpipe has a slow leak?
3.) Drill low on the side or at the bottom with external ball valve. This would allow you to also do large waterchanges, but would not have an overflow feature if you stepped away from the tank during a refill, taking away the "automatic" nature of the waterchange. There are some that also worry about having stagnant water sitting between the bulkhead and ball valve.
4.) Drill a little bit low with moveable overflow. Just like Larry presented in his talk at this year's BFD. Basically, he has two street ells put together and they rotate in the bulkhead. In the "up" position, it sets the waterlevel and allows overflow of excess refill water if one tank fills before the rest are done. in the "down" (horizontal) position, it causes the tank to drain to that level. When done, you'd return it to the up position and turn on the refill. This one would also put occasional stress on the bulkhead and might be subject to a slow leak. But because it's not near the bottom, if a tank did slowly drain, at least there should be enough left to keep the fish safe. This one also limits the size of your waterchange to the amount of water able to be drained in the down position.
5.) undrilled with siphon overflows. I've tried a few of these and they work great for a little while, but then it seems one always fails on me at the worst possible time. I don't trust them.
