[danny zubot]

Ooh man, where to begin.

First of all, do the notched overflow if you can. I would have, if I would have thought of it at the time. (BTW, for those of you who don't know, that pic if of my tank) When I picked up my tank from Bow valley after they drilled it, I saw a notched overflow on another tank they were working on, and loved it. But, too late for me I guess.

Secondly, if you are thinking of making the external overflow out of acrylic, think again. Acrylic warps under the heat of any lighting really. What you see in the pic is what I had, and it failed. It actually started to peal right off of the tank. I should have made it out of glass. The design is sound, but my execution of the design back fired totally. The adjustable standpipe worked well, but it was noisey. Adding a Herbie to the standpipe would be a great idea. I never thought of that at the time either, probably because the tank is in the basement and I don't really care about the noise.

I have since added a check valve to the return, but only because my sump was about 1 gallon shy of being able to handle the water drain off.