Help with flow rates

[jimmyleg]

Does anyone have a chart with flow rates for tubing? That is, how much flow at how much pressure thru what size tubing. I'm trying to figure flow rates thru the new setup I'm putting together.

Also, any recommendations for overall flow/turnover?

What I want to do is run about 800gph thru a closed loop with a Oceans Motions Squirt or Super Squirt in a Oceanic 75G and then at least 800gph thru a roughly 90G basement sump and fuge. I want to do an SPS/LPS tank.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[capncapo]

I believe that your limiting factor will be your drain size. If you have a single 1" drain you will be limited to about 600gph or so.

Here is a link to the drain calculator here at RC.

http://www.reefcentral.com/calc/drain.php

Lots of folks are claiming 40X to 60X turnover per hour for SPS. Some do even more.

 

[jimmyleg]

There is a 1" durso draining the tank, would it be better to enlarge it for a 1 1/2" or drill for a second overflow in the back wall inside the RR stack below the waterline?

Right now I'm looking at 18x turnover, should I look at increasing the closed loop rate?

 

[sirreal63]

I would increase the flow with a couple of Seio's and not try and run so much through flow through the sump, it makes the overflow noisy in my experience. A couple of Seio's will give you flow w/o needing the electricity to move that much water. The closed loop works good too, but again you need the larger pump to account for the losses due to the bends and friction.

I just put a Seio 1500 on the 125 and I am amazed at the gentle flow pattern. I will probably add a second one from the other side and use a Hydor on a MaxiJet to break up the dispersion of the flow randomly.

 

[capncapo]

If you can make the hole larger it would make for a "cleaner" look and most likely be much simpler to plumb. If you do then you might consider going to a hole large enough to use a 2" drain. You may never need to have that capacity but if you do it's there. The extra cost would be almost be non-existant. Either way would do what you want.

I would increase your closed loop rate also.

 

[jimmyleg]

How are things working out since merging the two tanks, Jack?

I've got a SEIO 820 I could put in, but was hoping to keep the display as clean as possible, have thought about putting an eductor/penductor on the return or on the CL return ports, perhaps. Both the return and CL will use pressure rated pumps as of right now so they should benefit from the eductors

 

[jimmyleg]

Would the larger overflow be a lot noisier? This thing is going into the living room and will have to pass muster with my better half, already wondering how the extra light in the room is going to go over, too much noise would get me banished to the basement with everything! :eek1:

 

[DrBDC]

Really the flow through the sump doesn't need to be much more than what the skimmer feed rate is. Most your flow should come from the closed loop/powerheads. For awhile everyone tried to get thousands of gph through sumps and it's just unecessary.

 

[capncapo]

The overflow should not be noisier.

My personal preference would be a larger drain in the tank. Once the drain exits the tank bottom you are still at liberty to plumb it with any size PVC that you wish. The amount of flow will be "metered" by the smallest pipe in the drain system.

 

[jimmyleg]

Glad I asked, I was ready to do some ordering tomorrow, now I'll have to rethink the plan a bit.

 

[jimmyleg]

How is this for customer service, emailed Oceans Motions to ask a question and received a response on a Saturday night within about two minutes!

Thanks for the help with my flow questions, folks!

 

[caesura]

The folks at Oceans Motions are definitely top notch. I don't know if you can run eductors on the Ocean Motions units or not. I would give them a call before you try.

 

[jimmyleg]

Thanks, so far couldn't agree more on their customer service. I called their number last Saturday evening just to leave a message and Paul answered, was out somewhere it sounded like, but still took time to answer a couple of questions.

I've checked their forums and some people are running eductors &/or penductors with success, only problem is at 25 bucks a piece for it's an extra hundred in my case to get the benefit. I thought about putting just one on the sump return since the pump is pressure rated, but not sure how effective that would be. They have a flow threshold that you have to get past to make them work, but at max flow you can supposedly get 4-5 times the pump output.

Anyone running eductors/penductors? I saw some in rs2208's tank and they seemed to flow much like a Stream or SEIO in that they pull a lot of water from the area around the pump/head and it gets drawn into the stream

 

[Dert42]

i'm running a seio 2600. seems pretty beefy.