1 or 1.5 inch Bean Animal?

[fessoclown]

I am having a new tank built. 80x20x20. (around 135 Gallons) I am trying to decide on the size of plumbing to put in the overflow.
1 inch full siphon will give me 1443.61 GPH should I really need to go to 1.5 inches as most people seem to do for a larger tank?
1.5 gives 3248.13 at full siphon at 18" head height... that seems a ridiculous amount of flow.


I am currently using an ehiem 1262 ( 898 GPH ) with 1 inch full siphon on a 60(ish)Gallon tank. I close the line to match the pump and I divert some water to my fuge.

My Avast CS1 Skimmer is fed by a MJ1200(300 GPH)
Does that mean I can only process 300GPH and I should keep the flow rate through the sump around 300-400GPH?

Something tells me that 1 inch lines will be sufficient but I want to check my thinking. I would like to keep the 1 inch for a lower profile overflow box.

Thoughts please?

 

[ca1ore]

One inch bulkheads will be fine; tank isn't that large. No correlation between flow through the sump and skimmer pump throughput - no matter what anyone might try to tell you!

 

[Cubist]

Just researching this now for my 4 x 2 x 2, 120 Gallon i'm considering.

Not sure if this is useful but if you're considering beananimal/herbie style draining the main benefit with greater pipe diameter is not that it improves the flow rate of the siphon (although of course it does) but the fact that a larger diameter pipe on the non-siphon drain is much less likely to be noisy. In fact it will be silent as long as there is an an unbroken channel of air down the pipe.

 

[garyinco]

I hear a lot of discussion in the epic bean animal thread to use at least 1.25" on the "open channel" drainpipe. Reason is the one inch doesn't have enough internal surface area to allow that pipe's flow to fall along the walls of the pipe without the air/water combination to start tumbling in the pipe and creating noise. My Planet Aquarium 105 has the same pairs of 3/4 and one inch drain holes. I have used 1" pipe on the full siphon and bushed it down to 3/4 for the drilled hole, and 1.25" on the open channel and emergency drains and bushed them down to 1" at the drain holes.

 

[Zacktosterone]

One inch will be plenty!! 2000gph I believe on just one full syphon

 

[inetmug]

I read 10-20 times the tank volume per hour is the goal. This can be a combo of sump throughput and in tank flow to some degree as I hear.

I agree, with my limited knowledge to date, 1" drops a lot of water.

 

[ca1ore]

Always a good idea to step up the pipe size above the bulkhead for an open channel; unecessary for a siphon. Personally, I always run my tanks at a flow of about 3x tank volume through the sump per hour. Haven't found more to be beneficial in any way; but what do I know - only been keeping reef tanks since 1988 :lol:

 

[ca1ore]

I read 10-20 times the tank volume per hour is the goal. This can be a combo of sump throughput and in tank flow to some degree as I hear.

You're mixing your metaphors! Flow through the sump is, IME, more than adequate at 3-5 times tank volume per hour. Flow in the tank depends completely on what it is you are attempting to keep. In my SPS dominated tank, for example, I run propeller pumps that move on average 50 times tank volume per hour.

 

[Cubist]

Hi guys, just to reiterate, the idea behind the larger drains on the beananimal thread has almost NOTHING to do with flow and EVERYTHING to do with noise prevention.

Sorry for the caps, but i was about to make a similar mistake myself.

Bean animal used 1.5 inch pipe and fittings on a 1 inch bulkhead and I believe he mentioned it was silent (as in truly silent) up to around 1000 GPH. However, when ratcheted to double the flow, a perceptible trickle was heard down the open-channel (non-siphon). His hypothesis was that this would be improved with a larger open channel drain diameter. (Which was limited by the bulkhead.)

In fact even Richard Durso recommends using 1 1/4 inch fittings on a 1 inch bulkhead for his system (single open-channel pipe) to be effective.

In summary. One inch will be more then enough for flow. However, it may be at the sacrifice of silence.

Good luck.

 

[fessoclown]

THanks for the replies. I have decided to just go with a Herbie with 1 inch bulkheads. The overflow is going on one of the ends of the tank peninsula style and I would like to still have 10 inches of viewing area from that end.
Flow in the tank will be accomplished by 2 MP40's.

 

[asudavew]

I have 1" bulkheads and 1" pvc on my 120 and 1.5" bulkheads with 1.5" pvc on my 180. The 120 has a ball valve and the 180 has a gate valve.
Both are silent when adjusted properly.
But if not adjusted properly the "trickle" can be heard from the open channel.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[fessoclown]

I set up my first bean animal type drain "wrong"...
ON my current tank I have been running my "bean animal" with the open channel dry... been doing it wrong for 1.5 years... I never understood why you'd want to have a trickle at all... If I get a blockage in my siphon the open channel kicks in, if that can't handle the flow the emergency kicks in... (it has never happened)

 

[Cubist]

Is it still perfectly silent in this configuration? The reason I ask is that I thought it was supposed to be very difficult to balance a full-siphon for any period of time. They run at a very specific flow rate without much (if any) margin. Any slight decrease in flow from your return would cause the water level in your overflow to lower introducing air to your siphon and causing gurgles, and any more flow would begin to fill the overflow causing water to drain through your open channel.

As I understand it, you actually want this trickle because it means that your full siphon is being maintained indefinitely and not breaking/gurgling sporadically.