rumble
New member
Hey all, hoping someone can help me clear this up. I really have two questions. First, is there a cheap and easy method of figuring out how much flow is coming out of return pipes? Here's why I ask:
I just got my mom's 57G rimless up and running a couple weeks ago, and things changed considerably from what I planned for plumbing and what I ultimately decided to do. First, we returned the Oceanic sump it came with and I built a custom acrylic sump based on melev's Model F design. Reason for that is the Vertex IN-100 skimmer is a BEAST and we wanted a refugium in the sump.
Now, the return for the sump is in the middle chamber and uses 3/4" PVC. I have a T off the return that allows some of the return water to flow to the refugium (controlled by a ball valve), with the rest going to the display. The Tunze Silence 1073.20 we got is rated at 633 GPH, so it doesn't exactly have power to spare for this. What I'm wondering is, how much water can I can feed the refugium and still get an acceptable amount of flow through the sump?
The other question is powerhead requirements. I thought we'd be doing pretty well with a Tunze nano 6025 and a Koralia 2, but in reality there seem to be a lot of areas in the tank that are not getting much flow. So really, what do I need here? This tank is 36"L x 18"W x 21"D (maybe a little deeper, I can't remember.) The goal is a mixed reef with about 100lbs of live rock, 50lbs of live sand (tampa bay saltwater), mostly SPS, but probably a few softies/LPS as well as a few fish. I know we probably should have done a vortech mp20 or something, but the hardware budget is pretty much exhausted at this point, so I'm looking at bang-for-the-buck now. Any advice would be appreciated.
I just got my mom's 57G rimless up and running a couple weeks ago, and things changed considerably from what I planned for plumbing and what I ultimately decided to do. First, we returned the Oceanic sump it came with and I built a custom acrylic sump based on melev's Model F design. Reason for that is the Vertex IN-100 skimmer is a BEAST and we wanted a refugium in the sump.
Now, the return for the sump is in the middle chamber and uses 3/4" PVC. I have a T off the return that allows some of the return water to flow to the refugium (controlled by a ball valve), with the rest going to the display. The Tunze Silence 1073.20 we got is rated at 633 GPH, so it doesn't exactly have power to spare for this. What I'm wondering is, how much water can I can feed the refugium and still get an acceptable amount of flow through the sump?
The other question is powerhead requirements. I thought we'd be doing pretty well with a Tunze nano 6025 and a Koralia 2, but in reality there seem to be a lot of areas in the tank that are not getting much flow. So really, what do I need here? This tank is 36"L x 18"W x 21"D (maybe a little deeper, I can't remember.) The goal is a mixed reef with about 100lbs of live rock, 50lbs of live sand (tampa bay saltwater), mostly SPS, but probably a few softies/LPS as well as a few fish. I know we probably should have done a vortech mp20 or something, but the hardware budget is pretty much exhausted at this point, so I'm looking at bang-for-the-buck now. Any advice would be appreciated.
