Need Info on Return Pump and Coast to Coast Bean Animal

[CuzzA]

So, I'm in the design stage of a 96x30x24 build. A fellow reefer gave me their steal powder coated stand and canopy, which was really awesome and wouldn't have happened without RC.

I have a few questions on how to go about my build.

I haven't decided on a builder yet, but after some suggestions from others I'm really leaning toward a 1/2 inch starphire front. 1/2 inch standard glass sides and back. A 1 inch PVC bottom sitting on 3/4 inch plywood. And braced with either anodized aluminum or steel. I'd like to hear some suggestions on this. Some have said go 3/4 inch and others have said if the tank is built right (perfect seams and bracing), 1/2 inch is plenty strong.

Where I'm really stumped is on the return and bean animal drains. As for my return pump I'm either going with a Sicce Syncra 16 which puts out 3466 gph at 5 feet of head or 2 Waveline DC 12000's which put out 2000 gph each at 5 feet of head. I'm leaning toward redundancy.

The overflow will be coast to coast and I understand how to setup the beananimal drains, but where I'm stumped is on the pipe size. I'd like to utilize all of the pumps flow and not dial it back. So specifically my questions is, can I get away with just the standard 3 drains or would I need to add a 4th siphon and what size pipe should I use?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. My local forum and general forms have not been able to help much. I'd like to "know" how it should be setup rather than just rely on a builder and hope they get it right. I guess it's just my personality. I like to learn and understand things.

Thanks in advance.

 

[dave.m]

Rather than do all the work for you I will give you a list of things to investigate. By the time you are done you will have figured out for yourself the whats and whys, and that is the understanding that you have asked for.

You would normally aim for about 5 tank volumes turnover per hour between the display tank and the sump. The remaining 10-15x flow in the tank is accomplished by powerheads or various other wave simulators, dump buckets, etc. The 3-pipe bean animal drain is designed to take most of the 5 tank volumes per hour drained amount in the first drain, a little bit of overflow in the second, and emergencies in the third.

So, you first need to figure out how much water (5 tank volumes) that works out to be per hour for your size of tank, then find out how much water can flow through different available sizes of PVC pipe. All this info is on the web just waiting for you to ask. Use the various aquarium calculators provided, like the ones on Reef Central's main page.

Dave.M

 

[CuzzA]

10-15x??? My 90 turns over a max 55x per hour. 10x from my return. While this is not constant as my powerheads change flow patterns every hour through my Apex, I couldn't imagine anything less. Especially, once my frags and small colonies will one day be large colonies acting like umbrellas catching large amounts of flow.

No offense, but I'm not asking anyone to do work for me. Sure, I could try to read the 328 pages of the Silent and Failsafe Overflow thread and "hope" to get an answer or I could utilize the knowledge from experienced hobyists and with a few minutes of their time they could "help" me out. Just like the guy who gave me his steel stand. Isn't that what the purpose of this forum is for? I don't understand why 50 people will entertain a thread about "Should I top off with saltwater", yet when real questions are asked the response is, "Go do your homework."



So, anyway after an hour or so of more research. I came across this chart by BeanAnimal showing siphon flow rates. If I go the redundancy route I'm looking at 4000 gph. At a flow rate of 2185 gph on a 1.25 inch SC40 bulkhead could I just add a second siphon and close off the gate to match the pumps output? I should note that he has this disclaimer under the chart.

"No consideration has been given to pipe roughness, turbulance (reynolds number, smoothness of flow). Real world: multiply the numbers by maybe .85 or so."

 

[Gangous]

Wow I have absolutely no clue how many times my tank turns over and that chart seems confusing .....

 

[NewMariner]

Im building a similar sized tank as we speak. Its 96x36x32. I have two dolphin 6250's for a closed loop. The return is being handled a by a third 6250. This puts me roughly at 25 times turnover in the closed loop, and if I did my head loss calculations on the return correctly, 10.5 times turnover on the return.

As far as the bean animal, I haven't ever had one, so I can't comment on it.

 

[CuzzA]

For anyone else reading this I found my answer. It was sitting there the whole time, but Apple's decision to not support flash created the oversight.

On beananimal's website there is a flash calculator.

http://www.beananimal.com/articles/hydraulics-for-the-aquarist.aspx

So, the answer to my own questions is @ 42 inches of head height (DT surface to Sump Surface) a 1.5" siphon pipe would allow 4,961 gph. This should work perfect for my returns that will be sending 4,000 gph back to the DT. The drain elbow going back to sump plus the gate valve will result in a little less flow and if it's still too much I can simply close the gate.