How would you plumb this?

[untamed]

Originally Posted by jvision

Has anyone done a Herbie w/o an overflow? I just think an overflow in the middle of the tank would take up so much space.

No...you can't really get the benefits of a Herbie without an overflow box. The exact thing that makes the Herbie silent is that it is not pulling any air into the drain. This also means that you aren't going to pull anything off of the surface. The surface of your display tank would form scum.

To remove the surface scum, you need to have the water fall into something. If it falls directly into a drain, that's noisy and no longer a Herbie.

I suppose you could adjust the primary Herbie drain such that the emergency drain was just coming into play. This would remove some of the surface water, but I doubt it would be very effective and you would always be adjusting the Herbie valve to get it just right.

Decorate the overflow with rock.

[Lance]

Like Untamed says: without an overflow the gunk builds up on the surface incredibly fast, depending on your bio-load. I ran my tank for 2 months with no overflow before I got my sump set up. At that time I only had a few fish and corals, and I had to bail the surface every day.