JayWho

Yep. You can't see it very well but there's 3 rubbermaid containers there; smallest/top one is my drip-tray with quilt batting, which drips into the second largest, which holds several gallons of plastic dish scrubbies from the dollarstore, has a few holes drilled in one side to drain into the largest rubbermaid and will get pumped back up to the tank. It has been a great little project to work on! And once it's finished and running, I'll be able to properly stock my Tanganyikan tank, cause it'll be over-filtered nicely!

Plumbed the overflows in today. Once the pvc cement is all cured I'll hook it all up and start testing.

I've been making a DIY overflow the past week when I have time here and there. Tonight I finally cemented the pvc together, and think it's hilarious to look at the two overflows side-by-side. You can see how crooked the first one I did is (right side), compared to the second (left side), before I figured out how to do it properly, lol. The first one I followed some advice I heard about doing the elbow joints first, and using a flat surface to press the bottoms onto to make sure they are level - which when then adding the pipe parts, realized they weren't straight at all... haha The second one I got it figured... Once they're cured I'll cement the rest of the plumbing. Hopefully the crooked one still works ok!

I have a 50 gallon tank, doing a tanganyikan setup, running a Rena XP2 canister filter, with a bunch of lava rock that I drilled holes and caves into, and some choice pieces of old live rock that I used to have in a saltwater setup that I boiled and rinsed. I'm using a mix of primarily crushed coral/aragonite and some plain 'ol gravel as substrate. (I'm almost finished a DIY overflow and DIY wet/dry sump (rubbermaids & dollarstore dish scrubbies - about 8gal of water and 4gal of biomedia) that I will be adding to the setup as well once it's finished and I trust it...) I'm still in the tail-end of my cycling, as the tank is new, but I currently have: (from a previous tank - and started my cycling process, so not appropriate for an african cichlid tank, but I'm leaving him anyway) 1 clown loach, 5 giant danios, 4 altolamprologous compressiceps, 3 lelupis and 1 small spotted pleco (not sure what kind - but it's over a year old and is only 2" long - was in a 10 gallon tank prior, so it should have grown a little bit if it were a regular pleco...) I will be adding either some julidochromis marlieri or transcriptus (maybe 4-6), and I'd like to add a pair of frontosa, or if I can find them tretocephalus, as they look similar, but stay smaller, which ultimately will be better for my tank.