Diy Wavebox Or Surgebox?

[offshoreguy]

Has anyone ever made one I am thinking of putting a 5 to 10 gallon on a shelf next to my tank and using a small powerhead to fill it, using a 2 inch bulkhead in the bottom with like a a flapper on it from a toilet. Put a float on it when the water level comes up every few minutes flap opens water drains into tank through large hose causing nice surge of water into the tank Wondering if it will cause havock in the overflows (more noise).................

Just cant spend the money on the tunze wavebox but damm that thing is sooooo cool

Any input would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
Wade

 

[JohnK]

There are a few ways to make surge buckets like that, but the ones I've seen tend to make tons of bubbles. Overflow wise, I'm not sure, I would think that it would work but noise would be likely.

 

[delta]

you can use thet setup with a toilet float setup you just have to use an all plastic one.
its the big black float that shuts off the water draining into the toilet tank on the tank on the back of the toilet.
you just put a float on the flapper to make the flapper open when the tank fills then as the water drains it closes.
It is actually quite simple but then there is the bubble but its cheaper so
might be worth a try atleast.

go to reefcentral on the DIY section type in "surge tank" in the search this forum at the b ottom of the page you will come up with some example

 

[offshoreguy]

Thanks Delta i check it out

 

[Biotoper]

I've been thinking about a mini-surge device for my 20H - I like the dump scrubber design (just w/o algal screen) taken from Adey's book. Essentially it's a tray balanced just so, so that when it fills close to full it tips into the tank. If the end tilts close the water surface, you shouldn't get much noise or bubbles but create a nice wave. Ideal would be to have your overflow along the entire opposite length of the tank for the waves to "crash" over and reduce rebounding.

 

[Ray]

You might want to check this out
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/surge_device.html

 

[offshoreguy]

just like what i was thinking thanks Ray

 

[capecodder]

Hello everyone...New to the forum, but not to the hobby.

I've made one of those surgemakers similar to Ray's. I think they work well, but I needed to make a few modifications due to the complications of having a larger one (5 gal bucket). I prefer using bobbers as floats. I actually use 2. One large one near the top, when to pull the flapper open and a smaller one near the flapper that holds the flapper open until bucket is near empty. Larger buckets create more suction and can cause the flapper to close prematurely. I also used a fishing line that connects from the flapper to the top of the bucket (with enough slack to open/close the flapper and attach the bobbers). Since I attached the string to the top of the bucket, it stopped the large bobber from going all the way to the bottom (which is why Ray's risers were needed) and the string never got caught inside the flapper when it was trying to close. I later changed to a square bucket, so that I could put the bulkhead through the side instead of the bottom, this allowed me to rest the bucket on a shelf without having to accomodate the plumbing coming out of the bottom. As a precautionary note, make sure that the emergency overflow of the toilet flusher can empty faster that your pump can fill it (I believe I've made this mistake). Good luck.

 

[G.T]

A friend of mine used to operate a simple surge device using a valve and an air pump. Water would be pushed out of a large cyclinder in the tank then a large valve would open and the water would rush back in to it creating waves this would happen every 15 seconds or so a great idea but i canno0t remember exactly how the valve worked

 

[RichConley]

I've been thinking about surge devices a lot lately, and my question is this


Say I've got a MJ filling the bucket. When its running X amount of water is moving into my overflow. As the bucket gets full, and surges, you've got a lot more than that. When the bucket empties, it goes back to that X amount of flow. It seems to me like you'd have your overflow boxes/pipes emptying and filling a lot, and this would cause a lot of noise (beyond the bubble/noise issues from the surge itself.)

 

[NateHanson]

the only water level change will be in your sump return pump compartment. That compartment has to hold more water than your surge device.

 

[JBendel]

The one surge I built used a siphon ... pump water up .... and then it forms a siphon that surges the water back in. This was on a 20 gallon, so I would suspect your siphon diameter could grow if you applied it to a large tank.

 

[capecodder]

Don't remember how I had mine set up...But I think I pumped from the tank rather than the sump. This will keep you sump level more stable. This depends upon the overflow rate into your sump vs the fill/empty frequency of the surge bucket. As long as the fill/empty rate isn't too slow, by the time the overflow is starting to catch up, the surge bucket is doing the opposite thing, so the oscillation in sump water level is reduced as it never feels the full effect of the surge bucket. For precautionary measures, I would make sure that your sump can hold enough water when the surge bucket is empty...Haven't had one set up for years, but you've inspired me to put one together again.

 

[RichConley]

the only water level change will be in your sump return pump compartment. That compartment has to hold more water than your surge device.

I think if you used the return pump, you've have oscillation issues. I know I've got my overflow tuned pretty close to what I move for water, so when I stick both arms in the tank, the water level will go up in them by about an inch, then immediately back down as the overflow catches back up. I think you'd get kind of a cycling going on.


I was thinking about the issues this would cause with auto-topoff, but I just realized that a lot of us use timers on our auto-topoff so that in the event of a float switch failure, the autotopoff can't give too much more water than the tank evaporates. Simple solution, turn off the surge buckets a couple minutes before the autotopoff comes back on.

 

[NateHanson]

I'm not talking about using the return pump to feed the surge device, or even talking about feeding the surge device from the sump necessarily.

Doesn't matter where you feed the surge device from. The water level will still drop in the return pump compartment. That's the only place the water level will drop until you get below the intake of the return pump. Then the display level will go down.

A float-switch top-off would still work in the sump return compartment with a surge device in operation. Just set it the switch so it will maintain the water level at the low end of the surge cycle. The water level in the sump will go up and down, but the top-off will only activate if the tank has evaporated such that the low end of the surge cycle is below the float switch or valve.

 

[PyroJon]

I have two large surge devices on my 180g reef. They are both fed from the sump and the water level in the sump rises and falls as expected.

I was concerned about autotopoff due to this constant rise and fall. My solution was to simply set the floats at the lowest point I ever want my water to be in the sump. So the autotopoff will only come on when water has evaporated enough that the floats drop when the surge devices are both near full and ready to dump. Works flawlessly.


As far as noise and bubbles I have found that you can eliminate all of the noise and bubbles but at the expense of flow rate. Just make the bottom of your surge tank (toilet flapper really) as close as possible to the water level in your display tank. There should be little to no air in the plumbing between surges and therefore no air to flush out with each surge.