plastic mesh to cover my overflow?

This is my toothless glass overflow, which fish seem to LOVE swimming over:



And this is the cover I made for it, out of some plastic stuff from the craft shop. It's for doing yarn embroidery or some such thing.




It's almost perfect, except it's kinda flimsy and the mesh is just a little bit small. The water tends to flow out onto it and then cascade down, causing unwanted noise. I'd like to find something like what the LFS uses for specimen boxes, some sort of rigid plastic screen or mesh, about 1/4"?

Any ideas?



EDIT: needs to be 4"x9" minimum.

 

you could use 'egg crate' light diffusers but they are often 1/2"

Light Panels: TAP Plastics

 

Perhaps you could somehow fashion a fence of eggcrate material to stand vertically perhaps an inch or two around the periphery of the overflow? This way water wouldn't be falling into or over any barrier, and it should be as silent as it was before, without giving fish an opportunity to take any unwanted trips.

If I were to do this, I'd shut down all pumps, drain about 5 or so gallons out of the tank so that I had a few inches of overflow visible above the waterline, and silicone some eggcrate as described. In your scenario, you'd have to notch out some "U's" for the return plumbing, but it's certainly do-able.

Good luck.

 

Eggcrate is way, way too big. Needs to be small enough to keep out highly motivated neon gobies.

1/4" at the absolute maximum.

 

I agree that a fence rather than a top would be better, I have seen people lose fish who jump onto a cage like yours and die. Something that they would hit and fall back into the water would be better. But it is still good if you dont have any real jumpers.

 

I like the idea of a fence, which could extend up to the mesh cover ...



.... thereby completing the barrier. I tried making a fence once, but this material is just too flimsy.

Last night, that neon goby I told you about got up onto the overflow and wriggled out from under the mesh tank cover, through the little space where the wires go under it. Found him on the carpet this morning, crispy as a corn flake.

I told you he was motivated.


.

 

This is where he escaped. Directly above the overflow - so he had to get up there first, and then out through here.

Can you believe that?

 

Just a thought...if you used the egg crate for it's strength and the craft plastic for its size, just cut both to fit the overflow, and use a small zip tie of the same color to hold the two togther...

 

It what way is the plastic craft material too flimsy to use as a fence? If you bent it to match the shape of your overflow and siliconed it at the bottom it is going to be more than strong enough to keep a fish out.

Neon gobies wouldn't have a chance of bending it down. They would just bounce off