Cali Kid Corals

drilling a bulkhead hole in a acrylic tank

seminolecpa

seminolecpa

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Currently my fuge and frag tank have only a 1" bulkhead for a drain and I am considering (at least on the frag tank) increasing the size of the drain in order to increase the volume of the turnover.

How difficult is it to do this over an existing hole or is there some better solution to use for a drain?
 
clamp a piece of scrap acrylic to the area of the hole you wish to enlarge and use that as your base plate for drilling the center bit of the hole saw through....ive done this a few times...it takes a good eye and alot of patience to get it straight but its possible..i think you should be good with just doing the frag tank...do fuges need a high turnover rate?
 
Probably doesn't need that high of a turnover rate. You are right much more important in the frag tank. The issue with the fuge tank is that the bulkhead hole is pretty crappy and there is a very very slow leak in it. Probably would be best to patch it up and drill a new hole. I just have little or no experience with acrylic tanks. Until I did my most recent setup change, I have been all glass.

Can't really explain it. Things in my display tank look great but my frag tank seems to be just on the ok side and they are on the same water system. Figure the turnover has to be something to do with it my display tends to run a degree or so hotter then the tank downstairs. Again I am sure it has to do with the turnover and the fact that the overall system water is not cycling through quickly enough. Additionally, I have my chiller running through the frag tank as I was afraid to hook it directly up to the display because of the loss of head.

What about doing a second 1" bulkhead hole and t-ing off the drain in the frag tank?
 
IIRC a 1'' bulkhead can support up to 700 GPH of flow, where as a 1 1/2'' does upward of 1700...if you were to double the amt of 1'' bulkheads to 2, creating 1400 GPH of flow, it would still be lower than if you were to change out the one bulkhead to a 1 1/2''..

if the bulkhead hole on the fuge is leaking, then your right, it might be a good idea to change that out as well...i have a pretty good hole saw hit ive used on our tank you welcome to use if you need it...

i also might have a 1 1/2'' bulkhead lying around somewhere too...if i can find it its yours..ill let you know
 
caveat to what Patrick said: those rating are for bulk heads that point directly up, if you put them on the side of any tank cut those figures in half.

FWIW I redo holes all the time. I save every cut out I make so I simply use a cut out from a larger hole and glue it to the other hole. Works great. I can look thru my cut outs and find one that will work for you if you'd like :)
 
How can I say no Mikey. I think the main thing is having the right saw to cut the hole with. Probably going to entail at least partially draining my frag tank if not draining it altogether. I need to talk to you mopre about that wall anyway and we can finalize the details for the shirts.

I was at Atlantis today and they had a bunch of used tanks for sale so I went ahead and bought one to use in leiu of my current fuge.
 
[quote author=GreshamH link=topic=4085.msg48879#msg48879 date=1215873861]
caveat to what Patrick said: those rating are for bulk heads that point directly up, if you put them on the side of any tank cut those figures in half.




[/quote]

yea i figured...those are the same figures i was calculating against when we redrilled our overflow holes..
 
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