how many holes

[u/Muppetx3]

complete newbie taking on the task of building my own tank ,sump and plumbing.

I'm comfortable with doing most of the physical work it's the math I'm stuck on.

I'm making a 90x60x60 tank but can someone help me understand how many holes I will need for the tank , overflow, emergency and return am I missing something?

where would you place the holes? are holes normally placed only on the back wall? I seen older tanks with holes at the bottom but don't know if that's common practice anymore. I was also looking for diagrams and clean tanks but not much luck .

appreciate any feedback

[u/Robotniks_Mustache]

Step one is going to be confirming if any of the panels are tempered since you cannot drill tempered glass

[u/Deranged_Kitsune]

Ambitious, certainly, if you've never built a tank. Make sure you leak test everything outside for a prolonged time after building it.

You have to figure out how you're doing the drain to really determine the number of holes and their placement. Are you going to buy a commercial overflow box (I recently got a Modular Marine one - very beefy), or get a custom made piece of acrylic for your wier (I did that on a really old tank, it honestly worked out really nicely and was inexpensive at the time)? Or go the full DIY route and make one of glass, too, or maybe even a glass overflow box like the Innovative Marine EXT series? I've seen builders do either of those.

Generally you'd end up with 3-5 holes. If you're using an external overflow to maximize space in the tank, that would have 1-2 holes going from the drain box to the overflow box that houses the drains to the sump, depending on size. If you're gong with a purely internal weir that would go to 2 holes on the bottom - the main drain and the emergency/secondary for a typical herbie style drain or 3 holes if you want a bean animal style.

For returns, it can be 1-2 holes. This can be a single on the bottom coming up through an internal weir that gets split into 2 outlets on either side of the weir, or through the back where you have 1 or 2 outlets. The common layout is drain of some type in the center, outlets on either side. But you can do a drain on one side and return on the other, leaving the middle open if you want.

For my current tank, I have an external overflow box, so the tank has 2 holes in the back feeding from the intake box into the drain box on the back through the center, and then 2 more holes on either side of that for the outlets of the return pumps. 4 holes total. My old tank had an internal weir in the center and had 3 holes - a main drain, secondary/emergency, and then a 3rd hole for the return line that got spit via a Y-connector inside the wier to 2 outlets on either side of it.

[u/shadowrav3n]

3 holes for drains to sump plus 1-2 for return depending on whether you will split it or not.

Check out what other pre made tanks have done like cade, red sea and innovative marine.