Middle Coast to Coast

[Original Fin]

Just an idea I'm kickin around. If anybody thinks they may know the answer to this, please let me know...

I want to do a coast to coast overflow, and instead of the usual back wall placement, I was wondering if it might be possible to run it front to back in the middle of the tank.

If I was to cut the top middle plastic support out on my 120 Glass tank, would I be able to replace it with glass panels siliconed to the front and rear glass faces? Would that hold? Sort of like eurobracing...see the graphic below.

The thought is that you lose a little area in the back when you do a C2C (at least it creates a shadow) on the back wall. Add to that the plastic center brace and a fairly big portion of the overall top surface area is blocking light into the tank. So my thought is why not get rid of the plastic center brace, and put the overflow (with the same rough width dimensions) where it was? As long as the silicone bond is strong enough, the C2C would replace the plastic as the top structural tie for the front and rear panels.

I'd keep the rest of the plastic surround on the top edges...just cut out the middle. It would need to go in order to access the C2C trough for cleanout, maintenance etc. I'd still have the full 48 linear inches of cacade, but it would be coming from two sides instead of one continuous length along the back.

It would be plumbed with the beananimal overflow method, but instead of exiting the back of the tank at a right angle, it would just go straight down through the bottom of the tank into the sump. Return line plumbing placement would be pretty flexible with this design...I'd probably just come up over the back wall.
I plan to make my own rock for this one, so a middle pier structure will be formed to hide the overflow plumbing.

What do we think about the bracing issue?

[Chasman]

Hey Fin

Cool idea but I'm not sure if the silicone would have enough shear strength to hold it. I'm sure you could figure out some type of supplemental bracing down each edge of your weir since those will block your light anyway. The big problem I see is drilling the bottom of your tank. Any tank that size will more than likely have tempered glass on the bottom. Touch a glass hole grinder to that and boom.

You could put a 2 inch single bulkhead out of the back of the weir and then build an external overflow box for the Bean Animal system. I've seen a lot of the external boxes done on the RC site. I wish I would have done it that way myself.

Hope you can figure something out as it would be a unique design.

Chasman

[Original Fin]

I was hoping you'd chime in on this, being our resident c2c beananimal expert!

The bracing was my initial concern, but I agree that there's probably a dozen easy solutions following the weir edges as you said. I think I've seen somebody use half-round acrylic rods as center bracing.

As to whether or not the bottom panel is tempered, I hadn't put too much thought into it yet...theres a trick to finding out using a smartphone display and polarized sunglasses, just hadn't gotten around to it yet. I'll take a look tonight and update the thread a bit later.

Appreciate your thoughts!

I

[Original Fin]

Turns out the Polarized sunglasses I had were
The last ones to get lost. The new ones aren't polarized.

Doesn't matter though...as I was cleaning the glass I found the torn remains of a sticker on the bottom outside corner..."WARNING DO NOT DRILL"

I guess that answers that question...