How do you hide your...

[jrmakawoody]

Just wondering how Yall go about hiding your aquarium equipment: Heater, filter intake/return, CO2 Diffuser etc. The "hide behind a plant" trick works for the most part but for something like a filter spray bar or intake, the plants tend to get beat to death if you have a high flow filter setup. Your thoughts?

 

[DMD123]

I 'hide' my heater by using Hydor inline's on my canister. The rest of the stuff is visible.

 

[DMD123]

Forgot to mention I have black backgrounds on two of my tanks so much of the stuff just blends in, except for the bright green Eheim stuff.

 

[Jubs]

Forgot to mention I have black backgrounds on two of my tanks so much of the stuff just blends in, except for the bright green Eheim stuff.

 lus1:  and tons of plants you can also "plant" your intakes and outputs with say java ferns as well if you want it completely hidden.

 

[jrygel]

I use a canister with a Hydor inline heater, so the only two things in my tank are the filter intake and spray bar. The tank is viewable from all four sides, so I have a wooden tower built into the stand at the back corner that holds all the tubing and wiring, which is spread out to the various lights, filter return, etc inside the hood. The filter intake is in the back corner next to the tower and has plants in front of it, but it is pretty visible from the back, no way around that with all four sides exposed. I also use a spraybar, which is mounted it high on one side, so it is visible, but not very obvious unless you're looking straight at it.

 

[jrmakawoody]

The reason I ask this is that I am trying to come up with a way to hide the spray bar on my 55 gallon aquarium. The filter I have is an odyssea CFS 500, which has a pretty high flow so I went to lowes and pieced together a cpvc "spray bar". I plan on painting it black, but it is still rather unsightly. I can really put it behind any plants because the flow is still just a little to much. I could "turn down" the filter, but I want to use it to its full potential.

 

[Jubs]

You can also drill larger holes, it will decrease the pressure it flows out at. How high are you mounting it to the top of the tank? If it is high up then a black background with the spray bar painted black would likely be the best option for you.

 

[jrmakawoody]

its right below the rim of the tank. I will drill some more holes to help tame the pressure. I will definitely try to do that with the black background and painting the spray bar black. Thanks Jubs

 

[Jubs]

No problem!

 

[KaraWolf]

You can see everything....it's a little sad looking now that I'm staring at it. Mostly I give up trying to hide anything partially because it's useless for me, partially because it's fully plastic plants and taming anything never ends up sticking. So now I just have extra cords bundled at the bottom and everything else is a bit of a mess. At some point I'll probably try to bundle all the cords at the top and run them down one corner at least. Course that would also mean my air pump either needs a home or the filter intake modified so I can take it out completely. Currently it's wandering around the outside of the tank when it starts to make too much noise I move it again.

 

[DMD123]

Most of my cords are not seen because of the background but under the stands is a big mess that I need to organize. I know it would not be that much time to do it and a couple of zip ties. But its one of those out of sight out of mind things.

 

[Anonymous]

The reason I ask this is that I am trying to come up with a way to hide the spray bar on my 55 gallon aquarium.  The filter I have is an odyssea CFS 500, which has a pretty high flow so I went to lowes and pieced together a cpvc "spray bar".  I plan on painting it black, but it is still rather unsightly. I can really put it behind any plants because the flow is still just a little to much.  I could "turn down" the filter, but I want to use it to its full potential.

I can share what I did with my tank. I dropped the spray bar down an inch or two, twisted it so the flow was a diagonal angel up. Planted Rotala Indica right under the bar. I then trimmed the plants right underneath the flow before the current could catch the plant to much. I could still see some of the bar but the plants attraction distracted the attention away from the bar. I did have to maintain proper water level and turn off the pump when conducting water changes or the jets will break surface.