lily pipes

[meadeam]

I love the look of a rimless planted tank with glass lily pipes.  I've never used them because I don't want to lose a ton of water to evaporation and so I run glass lids on my rimmed tanks.  I just bought a 36 bowfront, which is rimless.  It came with a black plastic lid I really don't like, not least of all because I want to run a Fluval Aquasky as I do on my other tanks, or a Plant 3.0.  So I am considering going lidless.   I had these pipes from an abandoned attempt on another tank.   

This seems to be good placement, or would you suggest a different arrangement.   Will I be able to have surface/floating plants?  Thanks in advance for your experience

 

[Streetwise]

I think that you will have to make a photographic choice, rather than a functional choice. I prefer gear on the back wall of a bow, with some degree of symmetry.

[meadeam]

On 11/29/2021 at 7:08 PM, Streetwise said:

I think that you will have to make a photographic choice, rather than a functional choice. I prefer gear on the back wall of a bow, with some degree of symmetry.

The asymmetry does bother me a little, but less so than it would if the pipes weren't glass.  I know I'll have to keep them clean.

[gardenman]

You may have some issues with the surface skimmer and some floating plants. Larger floaters like water lettuce or frogbit  will do better than smaller floaters like duckweed. A surface skimmer exists to skim stuff off the surface and smaller floaters like duckweed will crowd it and hinder its effectiveness. Floating water sprite or water hyacinths would be fine though.

[Mmiller2001]

Placement looks good to me.

[meadeam]

On 11/30/2021 at 9:48 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

Placement looks good to me.

Thanks, will roll with it for now.  I started running airstones in my other tanks, and on my 29 I decided as long as I was running air I may as well put it in a nano sponge filter.  They're easy to hide, provide a little more movement down low in the tank, and then I've got it ready to go whenever needed.  I'll probably put one in this tank as well.

It's a different topic, but this may be my last tank with a canister filter.  I'd like to switch to a centralized air driven setup, but my tanks are in multiple rooms.  I may still try it at some point, and move the canisters to the 6ft tank I hope to have at some point.  I'm constantly changing plans though.