Tank Journal Archive

Building The Ghost Box And Weir Box
Ok, I decided to source my own Acrylic and build my own boxes. I wanted minimal intrusion into the main tank so the ghost box had to be fairly flat. A mate has a CNC table and did a fantastic job on the teeth. I managed to get away with only a 30 mm wide box. Didn't want any shadowing potentially.
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The weir box was fairly straight forward, only challenge was making sure the holes line up perfect with the glass and ghost. Obviously be dead level and ultimately not crack the acrylic as I drilled it... I'm happy to report there was no such issues. phew!!! Would have hated to bother my mate again for another comb.... Using all slip fittings and I think they are the best looking too.

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So thus far I have the two RO boxes setup and connected inside...
The weir box sits nicely away from the RO boxes and I made sure all plumbing will have enough room for the unions to fit between the RO boxes...
I did complete my plumbing today but had not had a chance to mount it to the weir box yet. Did the water test on the ghost and she's all good.

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My 40 meters of 6mm RO water line arrived today so tomorrow its going through the roof and that's it for top up water. Timer, float and manual isolation valves. No joint anywhere that could cause water damage, last thing we want is for the hobby to start doing damage.

The sump has also been collected and is pretty straight forward. The aim was to have two 18cm socks mounted in a tray so that water flows from the first compartment on the back left into them. Then under the baffle to the skimmer, over into a wide bubble trap where all my 8 litres of Siporax will go and then the return section. Nothing complicated here. The tray will be built this next few days. I want quiet water in here so no big drop is crucial. All 45 degree fittings where possible... should be nice and quiet.

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Loving this build, and you know its hard to say which is more fun... the build or the taking care of fish and beautiful corals. THIS HOBBY IS AWESOME!!
 
Well my current tank has the coast to coast overflow and all be it a great design, I thought id try and minimise things down to only do what they are intended for. The smaller weir box serves only one purpose. That is to have a section where we can setup our durso pipes in order to get silent removal of the skimmed overflow. My current tank skims great but no more efficiently than say... @daveH tank.... So I have more glass hanging of the back and during construction they decided to only have one durso and one emergency overflow.

So smaller box can do what a coast to coast does just as well. Given the comb that is on the inside is made wide enough in order to remove a good amount of surface water.

The way I see it you have two choices, Either build the back wall lower and put a comb right across it plus add a box on the back that spans the whole width... Or drill a few holes and work out a neat way to hide them while still skimming the surface. So I went with the ghost box to hide the holes and end up with a smaller weir box to only do what its meant to. Other advantages is, a smaller ghost box holds less water that will ultimately need room in your sump once the power goes off. My current coast 2 coast hold a lot of water and I needed to run my return section in such a way not to flood it or affect the skimmer as the level comes up if I turn off the return pump.
 

192k

Member
Nov 17, 2011
915
336
Northside Brisbane, 4017
It is definitely a different way of doing an overflow.

Surface skimming has so many varied opinions among people - as long as the top layer of protein rich laden water is removed from the display, it is all good :)

I like how you have planned the layout for your plumbing on the back wall :) It should look great when finished!

How will you be splitting your return lines?
 

gtrxu1

Member
Jun 25, 2012
363
196
Loving this build mate, Well done on the ghost overflow looks amazing.

I'm inspired!