Why no diagonal tank dividers?

I had an idea, and I'm sure zillions of people have had the same idea. It's for a diagonal tank divider. I Googled and I hunted but I can't find one. I don't want a front to back tank divider made of mesh. I want a nice showy tank. By inserting a simple glass or acrylic sheet diagonally into the tank you eliminate the unsightly edges. In fact by dividing diagonally you can't even tell there is a tank divider. And this is my quest. If I took my 30 gallon tank and divided it diagonally I could put community fish in the back portion and maybe some nice Cichlids in the front portion. They could all swim the full length of the aquarium and would appear to be all in the same aquarium. In a 30 gallon tank you could simply put 2 smaller hang on filter pumps in - 1 at each end and your good to go. You might need 2 heaters though. I can't, for the life of me, understand why I can't find a displayed tank like this on the Internet. You'd think there'd be lots of them. With a cut piece of acrylic or glass diagonally you wouldn't even need to glue it in - just drop it right in there.
Any thoughts on this, or has anyone already done a diagonal divider?

 

I think the biggest problem with that would be making a hood fit, you would have to be able to put a filter on the side of at least the front end of the aquarium, and the hood/glass cover wouldn't be able to sit on top. you'd definitely want to go with two heaters with the glass partition, whichever side the heater wasn't on if you only had one would probably have lots of temperature fluctuations

 

I love a novel thought. I seems the first barrier would be the interior plastic rI'm at the top of the tank (if you have one on yours) that may stop you from getting the divider in. I don't know enough about aquarium construction to suggest trimming the plastic in the two corners. Beyond that a canopy/filter like the Eclipse where the intake is on one side of the tank and the discharge on the other would work well for this. Any other filter with the intake and discharge far enough apart could be placed at the back of the tank where the divider bisects them.
If using acrylic you could easily drill enough holes at the bottom of the divider (more difficult with glass but doable with the appropriate bit) to allow water level to equalize thereby eliminating an extra heater. A piece of wood or any other decoration could be placed to hide the holes.
Just my thoughts on something I never considered, cool idea, good for you.

 

Hm... quite interesting! It allows for more swimming room for the fishes...
Maybe using a canister filter would get around the filtration problem? Not sure though.

 

Good point about the hood.
They do make an integrated hood, which has both lighting & filtration built in. They are too expensive for my taste, being $76. for the 10 gallon model.
It would be nice to DIY a hood which contains lighting, filtration, and heating all inside the back half of a hood.
I wonder if anyone has tried that yet? A tank without anything sticking into it except the take up filter tube would certainly be awesome!

 

Good point about the hood.
They do make an integrated hood, which has both lighting & filtration built in. They are too expensive for my taste, being $76. for the 10 gallon model.

I was checking on the internet before bought mine, the Eclipse System 1 for a 10X20 tank is $76 U.S. and for the same thing in Canada (I checked two places) is $235 Can and the exchange rate is only 20%, who can figure that out? I ended up buying a used one from LFS for $50, he uses them on most of his tanks. They make a 2 and 3 for bigger tanks

 

I have don't it w/ S/W but side to side, back being reef with small fish and more lithing and front with predatory fish. Used plexI w/ holes drilled. Used PH pump the water from front to back. Took it apart since it was hard to watch predatory fish constantly trying to go after the small fish thus smaller fish in the reef are always on alert. Besides more surface area to rub down the algae.
I have made my own river tank w/ water fall using 150 gallon tank using plexI (cheaper than acrylic) took it down since some how fish always find themselves in downstream and lot of lime built up due to splashing was too much of work, I thought.

I still have not tempt to have F/W tank inside the S/W tank. What a crazy ideas I have?

Maybe one day, ill get to try,lol!

 

. . . . I still have not tempt to have F/W tank inside the S/W tank. What a crazy ideas I have?
Maybe one day, ill get to try,lol!

Now that is one cool idea! Fresh inside salt, wouldn't that be a hoot

I'm seeing that as a divider glass siliconed in about 6 or 8 inches in from the back glass and parallel to it - with that being the freshwater section and the front section being all salt. Seeing those f/w fish swimming behind the s/w fish would sure make for an awesome and unique tank

 

I dunno, the diagonal divider would be neat, but maybe would work best if the tank was viewable from multipule sides...

 

Maybe you could divide a hex instead? ;D

 

Where this diagonally divided tank would really work best would be in a built-in the wall tank - where only the front glass was visible. That way you could have your filters and heaters on the ends of the tank and it wouldn't be seen easily.
You would still need to modify a hood or make one yourself though to accommodate the equipment being placed on the ends.

The wheels keep turning. I never seem to out of ideas, even if they are bad ones

 

the small point where the divider meets the glass might be a little difficult though. the small area would make it difficult to clean with a gravel vac and probably too small to allow fish to swim into...just a thought.

maybe move it up like an inch from the corner of the tank? (it wouldnt be two perfect triangles but more like a trapezoid). this would give room to clean...
and it would make almost any HOB filter possible to ...

 

Excellent point, UR. I hadn't thought of that.
It seems we're almost on uncharted ground here - so every idea is useful at this point.
I just bought an extra 10 gallon tank and I was already wondering about a diagonal divider for it. Fry on one side, maybe a fish or two on the other. Hummmm

I'm going to be making a custom hood and lighting for it anyway. Have to think some more on this.

 

I think the biggest problem with that would be making a hood fit, you would have to be able to put a filter on the side of at least the front end of the aquarium, and the hood/glass cover wouldn't be able to sit on top. you'd definitely want to go with two heaters with the glass partition, whichever side the heater wasn't on if you only had one would probably have lots of temperature fluctuations

There would probably be a lot of areas with inadequate water circulation.