problem?

[dilonredo]

how can i create a drain system without drilling through the glass?

[Athen]

aside from placing a pump with the discharge hose running back out of your tank there isnt really any other way the way i have my tank set up my water naturally evaporates out of the tank and waters my plants and raises the humidity at the same time.

[Jason]

Aye, if your not drilling your putting a pump inside.

[froggsong]

Originally Posted by Jason

Aye, if your not drilling your putting a pump inside.

Well, you could just use gravity, and pump it back in with a pump, but you'd have tubing coming out of the top of the tank, and the gravity flow wouldn't be as strong as it would be if it was coming straight down rather than up and over and down. But it would be possible... I use gravity to drain my CWD water area (currently a self contained pond), and if I had a pump in a bucket of water or whatever pumping it back in at the same rate that it was coming out (which is greatly affected by the diameter of the tubing you are using), I could keep putting in fresh water and pumping out dirty water. It would not be as aesthetically pleasing, and you would have to accommodate for the tubing with your lid, but again, I really feel it IS possible, with extra work and probably a little extra maintenance. It would also take a while to get the flow from the pump regulated with the outflow through the gravity line. It would probably be better to have the gravity line running water into a bucket/tank/whatever you want to use for a sump and then have the water circulated back into the tank, then back into the sump and through a filter or whatever. I would think that the pump would actually pull water through the gravity line more quickly than gravity alone in order to equalize the amount of water in the sump (you would probably have to have an airtight lid on the sump for that to happen though, am I right?).

Anyway, the short answer is, yes, I believe it is POSSIBLE, but it would be more work.

And of course, if you were only talking about DRAINING rather than cycling the water, then just put some tubing in the water area, suck on the end of the tube (or buy a siphoning kit) and stick it in a bucket as the water comes over the highest point in the tubing, this will run until the water is almost all gone and you can replace with fresh water. You can also use this method to vacuum out the bottom of the water area if you need to, you don't even need to buy an expensive aquarium vacuum, just a few feet of tubing (the thicker the tubing, the faster the outflow).

EDIT: I forgot to mention, if using the tubing to go up and over the side of the cage, the end of the line has to be lower (the lower the better) than the end in the water. Water will always flow down, even if it has to go UP to get there.

[Jason]

Oh the joys of creating a siphon,trials and tribulations and a headache unto itself, Me, i like the 2 pumps 2 ball valves lol..

[Athen]

yes froggsong you are correct If you had a bucket sump with an airtight lid and a discharge pump with an air tight fitting then a hose running from the tank into the bucket that would work, however, in order for that to work the bucket would have to always be full and so would the line any air break in it would cause the system to become "airbound" and lose suction.. remember the eductor i was talking about in the other post? this is the perfect example of how that would work like so an eductor is essentially a piece of piping with a y neck in it and in one of the y necks there is a venturri this would be your water inlet side ( you have to have some sort of pressurized water source on your input) then the water going through the venturri at the intersection of the y ( knowing that a venturri takes a slower moving water and by quickly narrowing its path making it high velocity) be at an increased velocity creates a low pressure area at the mouth of the other opening of the y this is your suction inlet. they low pressure area needs something to fill it so it creates a vacuum on the most convenient area this being the suction inlet pulling air and then eventually water and the whole mess gets blown out the other end.. this can also be completed by having a y intersection at a tight curve and would yield the same effect without a venturri

[froggsong]

lol, you lost me! I sooo don't have time to figure out what you're talking about right now!

[boogerman]

Look into canister filters i had the same problem canisters were the solution for my tank