Seeking your opinion for plumbing on a new frag setup

[incrediball]

Hi guy,

I am in the process of setting up a frag grow out system.

As I am a bit unsure if the current plumbing setup would work, your comments and critics are much appreciated.

Let me briefly explain about my setup: I plan to connect 12 glass tanks as shown in the attached picture.

The 4 glass tanks on "level 1" are meant to house NPS and LPS. Water will be pumped from the right-most tank all the way to the left-most tank. Tanks will be connected to each other by 3 34mm pipes (1.25-inch pipe).

Similarly, on "level 2" and "level 3", tanks will be connected by 03 34mm pipes. Tanks on level 2 and 3 are all connected and are meant to house SPS.

I wonder if these 3 pipes will be able to handle the flow and be able to maintain an uniform water height across tanks.

The tanks are of standard dimensions which are: 1000mm x 500mm x 300mm or approximately 40 inches x 20 inches x 12 inches. I would like to maintain water height of 25cm or about 10 inches.

Your comment is much appreciated. If you think the above setup would not work, any suggestion on improvement is welcome.

P/s: I am recycling the racks so rebuilding the system and scrapping those 4 racks are out the question. Due to space constrain, I cannot build 3 long tanks.

 

[noy]

Not sure what nps your are thinking of growing out but the care requirements adds a significant level of difficulty. you will probably have to either target feed daily or have 4 automated continuous feed systems. Don't think the horizontal pipes will propagate foods adequately across.

One thought is instead of having the horizontal flow through plumbing why not have a drain that flows downwards into the tank below and then into a common sump in the bottom which will be your returns (separate pumps into the top level tanks).

I just see a lot of money spent on lighting and wavemakers in this setup.

 

[joshky]

Why 12 tanks over 1 or 2 big tanks? Just curious.

 

[incrediball]

Hi,

Thx for your responses.

@Noi: I do not wanna operate too many pumps at the same time. I agree with the chore related to target feeding. I will use t5 (a lot of them ) for this setup.

@Josh: I am constrained by space. I can't make the tank any bigger nor longer so the only solution is to combine many mini tanks.