I agree that the tank looks fine and shouldn't give you any problems. The weight of a glasscages tank is distributed across the entire bottom panel, and not along the edges like most of the other brands (all-glass, perfecto, etc.)
DaveB;3181206; said:Can someone spot any flaws in my reasoning here?
If the power goes out, roughly 2 inches worth of water will fall into the drains before it stops and is below the lip of the overflow. 96x30x2 is 25 gallons of water. (Ish.) So I really only need to leave that much space free in the sump for an emergency.
If, using some rubbermaid garbage cans and ingenuity (like NolaGT's sumps), I'm able to elevate a bunch of my bio media another foot above the sump's top, I should be able to keep 1/2 to 2/3 of my media "dry" and still keep 80-90 gallons worth of the sump full of water, right? Most sumps usually operate closer to 1/3 full but I figure as long as the tank can overflow into it with some extra space why not have more water?
I'm trying to come up with a way to really put that 72x18 footprint to optimal use for media capacity as well as upping the total water volume closer to the 400 I originally intended to buy until I got such a deal on this tank. What would be really cool would be if I could figure out a way to evenly distribute the water over about 4 feet worth of drip plate. I guess since I've got that massive intake hole I could split it over two garbage cans. So basically I'd have a tower on either end and the pump(s) in the center, collecting filtered water from each overflow, almost as if it was two separate sumps. And I'd have 380 gallons of water working through my 300 gallon tank, which makes the fish that much happier.