Cutting Overflow Grate/Teeth

[ScubaPooch]

So the overflow grate on my CAD 18g mini is a major flow limiter. When a snail or piece of algea/debris covers part of it the water will rise to within 1-2mm of the tank edge and the back chamber lowers dramatically. This causes my ATO to trigger, lowering all my parameters. Then once I clean off the grate. The back chamber is resting and inch or 2 above normal causing my ATO alarm to go off and my skimmer to overflow. I dropped from 1.025 to 1.023 because of this.

 

Solutions I've thought of are cutting the grate out completely, and putting some sort of mesh like gutter guard in via zipties or super glue. This should increase flow? How do i cut the grate? Its plastic or acrylic... dunno.

 

Other idea is cut a bit of the bottom off each grate tooth so a full surface takes place, and hopefully leave enough of each tooth so my small clown doesn't go through (main concern).

 

Either way, how do I cut it? Lower tank water and use a dremel? Hand tools?

 

Any other suggestions welcome!

 

That's the grate overflow on the right, you can see the thickness compared to the egg crate. Thanks

[ScubaPooch]

I ended up cutting it with a dremel. Water level is rock solid now. Just had to be careful not to spray bits everywhere. Putting i gutter guard for now to stop fish from going over. The surface skimming is night and day!