power filter "overflow"

[flaunt]

i was going to post this in diy since it's *kinda* diy, but i thought it would be of more general interest... i've seen people post about getting a surface film on their water that they can't get rid of, and apparently a lot of people solve that problem by putting a bar across their power filter outflow to break it up and make the water suface more choppy. i'm sure that works fine, but with my aquarium i don't really get a surface "film" but i do notice bubbles collecting. i usually take this as an indication that it's time to do a water change (i don't use a skimmer), but i thought it would be nice to keep the bubbles from collecting there if at all possible. anyway, i took some pvc and made a gooseneck which i attached to the inflow on one of the two power filters i use. i put a 90 degree elbow on top of the free end (at water level) so i can adjust how much of the opening is under water. i was going to do a sh!tty little ascii drawing, but the spacing gets screwed up in HTML and i can't use the

tags apparently, so AH well..

 

anyway as you can probably figure out, the water gets sucked in from the 90 degree elbow at the water surface rather than the normal power filter pipe (which is typically atleast 6" down into the aquarium.

 

this obviously isn't an actual "overflow" but it's a cheapy way of getting some surface skimming! also i assume that doing this and running carbon in the filter would help remove more gunk than normal from the water. i could be wrong about that though. one other benefit is that if your power filter doesn't have a flow rate adjustment, this will enable you to adjust it.

 

FWIW

[BustytheSnowMaam]

This is a good idea, thanks for the suggestion.

Tasha