Fish Tank Waste Drain Construction:
It is important to have a drain in your fish tank
for two reasons. Firstly, to flush the fish waste
that settled on the bottom of the fish tank
floor and secondly, to drain the fish tank if
needed to do maintenance. It is important to
install the ball valve high enough for a bucket
to fit. The nozzle of the outlet must be large
enough to fit a swimming pool hose to drain
the whole tank. The draining tubes inside the
tank is in a square, approximately 200mm
from each side and slots are cut at the bottom
of the tubes for fish waste to drain. Many
designs make use of a solid lift overflow (SLO)
where fish waste drains through the tank
outlet into the radial filter. Personally, I found
this method not to be very effective for the
water drains too slow and not collecting all the
waste. Having a tap to discharges the water
at a much greater rate making the draining of
waste more effective. Follow these steps in
your construction;
• Cut 5 pieces of tube, 2 x 200mm, 2 x
750mm and one piece of 500mm long.
• Cut the draining slots with a grinder,
approximately 50mm apart to the centre
of the tubes. We are going to use this a bit
later in this exercise.
• The waste outlet gets installed on the
opposite side of the fish tank outlet.
• Measure a vertical distance, 600mm
from floor level and make a dot centre
horizontally on the tank.
• Drill a 40mm hole with a hole saw with the
centre as your reference point.
• Take a 40mm (1 ½”) running nipple and cut
it in half. The other half will be used at a
later stage.
• Insert a running nipple and fasten i