Ok. I think I'll pass on the threaded rod and just bend the peices. I want the braces to be as intrusive as possible. Water's about 5 inches up so far. It'll probably take a few hours to get to the top. I made the verturi by sticking a short piece of tubing onto the end of the powerhead, making a little hole in the top, and sticking a section of air tubing in it. Seems to be working well so far.

I have this in front of the window so it should look pretty cool.

Where do you get that stuff? Hardware store, boating store?

Anyway, I ran out of patience and sucked it to the top with my mouth. My homemade venturi wasn't strong enough. Maybe with another one of my powerheads, but anyway. It works if you just suck the water up and leave it. I don't have any bubbles going into it so it'll stay this way.

It's kind of cool to see the fish up there. It's got the window behind it so the fish are pretty exposed. I'll see my GF on Friday so Hopfully I can get some pics then. I'll take some of my new planted tank too

sorry to hear that

It's not worth a picture at this point. I need to find a strong enough venturi to continuously pull water so I can have bubbles going up inside the USD tank. Either that or I need to go back to the 3/4 gallon, which looks OK, just not as cool as the YOUTUBE video I'm trying to copy.

I'm continuing this topic in the "need to have more surface area to increase O2" because of the deaths I incurred.

There is a negative pressure, or vacuum at the top of the USD tank dependant on how high the top of the USD tanks water is above the lower tanks water surface. If you were to put a hole in the top of the tank air would rush in and the water would go down. In order to get the water to go up you have to suck air out against a vacuum. Since I want bubbles to go up into the USD tank all the time I have to have a powerhead sucking air out all the time.

I want bubbles to go in all the time because I want oxygenated air to flow through my tank because there is very little surface area on top of the lower tank and 4 of my fish died last night from lack of oxygen. I lost 3 clown loaches, an unknown cichlid, and a mosquito fish.

Right now it's working with the upper tank only half full. Bubbles are going out the powerhead into the USD tank and the venturi is strong enough to lift water half way. When it gets to a certain point some air leaks in around the bottom of the USD tank and the water goes down a little thus raising the lower tank level enough to make a seal again.

All the venturi's air is not getting into the USD tank so there is a slow rise until the lower tank goes down to a certain point to let air in.

Did you get all that? It's kind of hard to completely explain.

As soon as I get something that works and looks good I'll take pics.