[Jasonanatal]

Plumbing: CPR CS90 Overflow Box (Some What Safe at Removing Water)

I originally opted out of purchasing an aquarium with built in overflows mainly since my original design did not include a sump in order to keep the overall weight of the aquarium to a minimum. However, as this project sprials into something else I am now making the best of things and had to resort to using an overflow box to transfer water from the aquarium to the sump. I could have drilled but that would require me breaking down this aqarium and that was simply not a task that I wanted to undertake again. So I have had great luck with standard U-Tube Overflow in the past but wanted to make sure that I choose the best equipment that would work with my design. So I turned to the nice folks at CPR and purchased a CPR CS 90 Overflow Box to solve my problem.




Photographs - Friday, December 12, 2008 - CPR CS90 Continuous Siphon Overflow Box.




Photographs - Friday, December 12, 2008 - CPR CS90 Continuous Siphon Overflow Box Bulkhead being sealed with All Glass Aquarium Safe Silicon for extra protection against leaks.




Photographs - Friday, December 12, 2008 - Flexible tubing being connected using PVC Cement for a secure connection to the CPR CS90 Continuous Siphon Overflow Box.

The CPR CS90 Overflow box had some nifty features which made it stand out above the rest. The box itself is constructed to be 1 entire piece where as most overflow boxes come in two parts that are usually held together with nylon screws as well as sporting individual U-Tubes giving a combing total of 4 individual pieces on average. The CPR CS90 Overflow Box is constructed to one single piece and also includes a vent hole for easy siphone starting and continued siphoning of air via a Tom's Aqualifter Pump.

Now this device has it benefits but definitely has some downfalls as well. The siphon hole that is integrated into the CPR CS90 Overflow Box needs maintenance as much as any other piece of equipment in this hobby. It can become clogged with detritus or algea since the tubing is clear and reduce the flow or even break the siphon since bubbles cannot be extracted via the Tom's Aqualift Pump. I generally am anal about maintaining my equipment so I solved this problem by purchasing 3 seperated Tom's Aqualifter Pumps, two of which I use in a weekly rotation while one pump is strictly a backup pump should one of the pumps fail so that I can maintain the rotation. When the pump is removed for the weekly maintenance I clear the lines by running the pump in a Vinigar/Freshwater solution for 1 day. The pump is then dried off and placed in storage until the next rotation. I have also resolved the problem of the clear tubing building up with algae by replacing the tubing with Black RO/DI tubing which inhibits the light from feeding algae within the tube.