I have a bit of an unusual setup and I am trying to decide the best way to plumb a new chiller I have. Opinions welcome 
Background: Tank is a standard 6' 125g, ~18" of one of the ends is divided off with a piece of glass. I have a bean animal overflow on the large side that empties to my sump. The return pump (DC-12000) pushes water through a short 1.5" section which branches to two 1" SDR21 feeds. One of them returns water to the small side of the main aquarium where water then overflows the divider into the main section. The other 1" line feeds my manifold which sends water to my skimmer, GFO, and carbon all back into the sump. While the point of the chiller is to keep the small side cooler, obviously it will be chilling the whole system. Also, I want only about 600-700gph going into the small side so I need to route some of the flow to the main area.
The chiller is a JBJ Arctica Titanium Chiller DBA-150 1/5HP which requires between 480 gph and 1320 gph and has 1/2, 5/8, and 3/4" fittings.
As I have the return pump turned down to get a guestimated 1200-1300 GPH in return flow. My original plan was to just reroute my 1" return to all run through the chiller which should still be inside it's flow range and split the chiller return between both sides. However, that just seems like a lot to try and push through the 3/4" tubing and chiller? Instead, option 2 is to split the return before the chiller so that only part of the flow goes through the chiller into the small side and have the rest skip the chiller and go to the main. Option 3 would be to just use a feed from the manifold to feed the chiller which could then just dump back into the sump. Not really sure what option would be best.
The problem with option 2 is that when the chiller is on it would be dumping all the chilled water into the small side in an attempt to cool the whole aquarium which I fear would lead to large temp swings on that side. The problem with option 3 is that I am worried in order to get at least 480 gph from the manifold and sending the return back into the sump I would be robbing the return flow of too much (although I still have room on the return pump to turn it up).
Anyway, if you made it through my long and rambling post, thank you! Ideas?
Background: Tank is a standard 6' 125g, ~18" of one of the ends is divided off with a piece of glass. I have a bean animal overflow on the large side that empties to my sump. The return pump (DC-12000) pushes water through a short 1.5" section which branches to two 1" SDR21 feeds. One of them returns water to the small side of the main aquarium where water then overflows the divider into the main section. The other 1" line feeds my manifold which sends water to my skimmer, GFO, and carbon all back into the sump. While the point of the chiller is to keep the small side cooler, obviously it will be chilling the whole system. Also, I want only about 600-700gph going into the small side so I need to route some of the flow to the main area.
The chiller is a JBJ Arctica Titanium Chiller DBA-150 1/5HP which requires between 480 gph and 1320 gph and has 1/2, 5/8, and 3/4" fittings.
As I have the return pump turned down to get a guestimated 1200-1300 GPH in return flow. My original plan was to just reroute my 1" return to all run through the chiller which should still be inside it's flow range and split the chiller return between both sides. However, that just seems like a lot to try and push through the 3/4" tubing and chiller? Instead, option 2 is to split the return before the chiller so that only part of the flow goes through the chiller into the small side and have the rest skip the chiller and go to the main. Option 3 would be to just use a feed from the manifold to feed the chiller which could then just dump back into the sump. Not really sure what option would be best.
The problem with option 2 is that when the chiller is on it would be dumping all the chilled water into the small side in an attempt to cool the whole aquarium which I fear would lead to large temp swings on that side. The problem with option 3 is that I am worried in order to get at least 480 gph from the manifold and sending the return back into the sump I would be robbing the return flow of too much (although I still have room on the return pump to turn it up).
Anyway, if you made it through my long and rambling post, thank you! Ideas?
