1400 gallon tank !!

[Epicreefer]

Have any pictures of your tank? That would help some. The closed loop is not going to be an easy fix and would require at least partial draining of the tank. Drilling in acrylic is no big deal but you need a hole saw with adequate depth capabilities. The problem with closed loops is they tend to give movement up in the water column while you want movement down near the sand to keep waste suspended. In a reef with 50x turnover there is lots of flow everywhere but you need just 10-20x of quality flow.

If you have a canopy then the easy route would be to place a pillar of rock in the center of the tank and mount koralia or tunze power heads to it and run the cords up into the hood and to a power strip. With some careful rock placement and creativity you can hide the power heads and cords fairly well. Also using a piece of 2" PVC pipe drilled full of holes and zip ties to attach baseball sized rocks to it is much easier than stacking rocks. Aim the power heads down a little and you should get good waste export. Depending on how intuitive this idea sounds it could turn out with no visual distractions or be full of them, some of that comes with experience and patience.

 

[kmu]

Well with not wanting to spend thousands 4-9k on a masterstream I would suggest closed loop with penductors to up the flow out of the closed loop pump. I have a reeflo hammerhead on a 220 with 6 penductors in a closed loop and the flow is somewhere in the range of 20k gph out of a pump that is rated at 5200 or something near that. The penductors are 30$ each so depending on how many you use it could add up I guess but no where near what power heads will cost you

where can you get a penductor? how does it work I'm interested?

THX

I searched them, THX could probably not use them because my return lines are about 1" below the water surface and most need to be at least 2 to 3" below the surface so they wont suck in air