Question with plumbing my first reef ready tank

[Msolomo1]

So after a year of reading I'm ready ditch the nano to start setting up my first larger reef ready tank. I bought a 120 I made my own sump with a 40 breeder and now I have my return pump. I was originally going to do my return in the braided vinyl but have since decided to go with hard plastic my pump is a mag drive 9.5. The pump outlet is 3/4 that I stepped it up to 1 inch. I've read several threads that claim danner says for best flow to plumb return in twice the size of the outlet which in my case would be inch and a half. Has anyone found this to be true I can't find it in any of the paperwork with it? Also I'm having second thoughts on my pump size 950gph before headless should I have went with the mag 12? Will the 9.5 be enough and is there a reason I couldn't add two t's with 1/2 threaded barbs and inline valves to run carbon and gfo off the return with the 9.5. Sorry for the long post.

 

[thegrun]

I can't think of a good reason to increase more than 1", there would be very little drop in head pressure with increasing the pipe from to 1-1/2" unless you had a long return run with a lot of turns. I like to use about a 12" piece of silicone tubing to attach the return pump and then use PVC after that. The use of silicone tube (it is much softer and more pliable than vinyl tubing) reduces the noise created by the pump.
The Mag 9.5 will give you plenty of flow through the sump and even have enough extra flow to power a couple of reactors if you wanted to add them, I see no reason to up size to a Mag 12. I use an Eheim 1262 (900 gph) on my 120 and it also supplies a GFO and Carbon reactor.

 

[kmbyrnes]

+1. You will have plenty enough flow. You are not looking to get flow from this, just feed your skimmer and fuge ( and maybe a couple reactors ). Anything else is overkill. The tubing before the PVC makes a big difference. Even a tiny rattle becomes very noticeable when you have everything else silent.

 

[Msolomo1]

Thanks for the advice think I'm going to try to fit in a section of silicone now!