hey guys welcome to the tom reefer studio
today we're going to be working on the official six gallon tall
new viewers this is the tom reefer studio i have a 20 gallon water box behind me
i made the 3.5 gallon pico above it over here is the 5 gallon tall as i call it or it's closer to
six gallons now it'll definitely be six gallons because i'm adding more water to the external
overflow box and right down here is the 10 gallon peninsula tank today what we're going to do
is work on the five gallon tall here on how to make more room in the tank
and it's one of my obsessions i like to do overflow boxes exterior and interior and
it's a great way to save money if you want to buy a cheap aquarium with nothing inside
it for example my 10 gallon was a 20 tank from petsmart and i put an internal overflow box in it
and the five gallon i made from monitor shelves about a year ago and i've never been really
happy with the size and space inside so what i've done is added an exterior
overflow box to it which will free up a lot of room inside create better gas exchange i
can put the skimmer in there i can put a pump in there and i can really make a lot of space
inside what's already a small space so i got some glass from my glass guy as i say johnny dees and
here's a little conversation i had with johnny uh last video hey is this johnny johnny it's tom
how long are you going to be there
okay great all right thanks a lot johnny take care bye
all right guys field trip to johnny d's let's go get some glass oh my god
did you see that that was pretty good there you are
all right all right so how much do i owe you they're about this big 20 gallons
johnny's a great guy 20 bucks for this stuff right here awesome
this isn't going to be a how-to so much guys i do have a how-to on putting aquariums together
i think i have one overflow box video on how to glue these together and one on my five gallon
when i first built it i believe it's five gallon tall construction or something like
that and i'm a little more detailed about how i silicone these sides together it's pretty easy
you don't have to be a great do-it-yourselfer to do these things guys with overflow boxes
they're not visible anyway so i'm no expert at the construction aspect i have a lot of years
experience in reef keeping but i've always liked to do little things myself especially all right
i've cleaned this off with acetone guys and now what i'm doing is whoops i gotta get the level
it's going to be right in here and what i'm doing here is just drawing an outline so i
know where the silicone is going to go because you want to put it on both surfaces all right
all right so i put it up guys cleaned it up a little bit
and we're just gonna have to let it sit there i think i need tape because i did this
all right next step all right here it is guys it's all attached and what we'll do i did a small
test about two hours ago i filled some water in just to see if it would leak out the bottom it
water tested great so now we're gonna do is fill it up with water and i'm gonna transfer my skimmer
heater and the sensor for the ato and i'm going to put all that in here and i'm going to include
a filter sponge to collect any uneaten food or the detritus it really clears
up the water doing it this way because you're collecting all your detritus in here
all right guys so what we're going to do here now is fill up this with salt water i have some
already pre-mixed we're going to fill it up we're gonna put the pump in we're gonna test pump it
first make sure the overflow is working without any leaks and then we'll move everything over
see i don't want to fill this all the way up i want to fill it to a point where it'll overflow
not too low not too high i like to have some gas exchange so maybe i'll put a little bit more
the water that's in here is gonna get pumped into the five gallon which is
going to raise the water level up in the five gallons so it's got to raise it enough
so it pours over this overflow i have about a half inch to three quarters of an inch
of water in here so when this water goes in here to raise this level it's probably
going to bring this down before it goes over so i'm going to go with a little bit more
the water that's in here is gonna get pumped into the five gallon which is
going to raise the water level up in the five gallons so it's got to raise it enough
so it pours over this overflow i have about a half inch to three quarters of an inch of
water in here so when this water goes in here to raise this level it's probably
going to bring this down before it goes over so i'm going to go with a little bit more
all right the c is really small guys comes with the feet i'm gonna put that on and see if i can
rest it on the bottom i measure this just to be safe i think it should just be right i
don't want it to stick up too far and i have some elbows so what i'm going to do to get this on is
it's these cj's are weird sizes they say it's a half inch but i
think it's half inch exterior diameter because everything is like a dream yeah
this is what plumbers are using now the new plumbing is called pecs it's all
plastic everything is i also wanted to point out for new viewers every wednesday i do what's called
a water change wednesday and it's a question and answer format so on wednesdays you ask a
question below the video and i'll answer it there and then i answer it here but only on wednesday
okay so that's pretty intense flow right there it's going up i have not tested the leak test
on this at all so i can see we're going to see how it's going down it hasn't overflowed yet
add a little bit more and there it goes see it's overflowing
i'm going to go a little bit more even it's acting really quiet already at this low i'm
going to go about this level here all right guys there it is let me get a little closer for you
i'm going to change these wires here this i just plugged in so i could reach it so here's
the skimmer it's above the pump my concern is sometimes the skimmer will spit out some of
those micro bubbles down below so i didn't want to push the skimmer down any further
because then they may come up through the pump and come out into the tank there's
some now but it's just started there's some tweaking i have to do here there's the heater
i didn't put the sensor in yet there's the skimmer i kept the skimmer up high here on that
this is going to get a black cover you're not going to see this anymore you'll see it from
the side if you needed to but that's going to be turned so here's the top view looking down
you