i have a 30 gallon tank divided into 2 surges and am concerned my overflows wont be able to handle the water...therefore i was thinking if drew the water directly from the dt for the surges i would avoid my concern with the overflow... as a side benefit i thought that i would be adding some water movement to the display in that the pump is drawing water in and keep a steady water level in my sump so i dont negatively impact my skimmers performace....my problem with this is id like to avoid having pumps in my dt...so i was thinking could i just put the pump in the surge and have the intake plumbed down to the tank to pull the water up to the surge...then just have that pump fill the surges from up top...question is...would that pressure coming out of the pump be to much since i would have to buy a decent size pump to over come the height of th surge....also what pump would you guys recommend...thanks
surge and pump layout
- Thread starter becketd
- Start date
Seems like your overflow still needs to handle the surge when it goes into the tank unless your pumping fast enough to lower the DT level below normal, i.e. faster than your return pump. I'd also be concerned with putting a pump above the water level. You'd be risking it losing its prime and running dry. Those are just my initial thoughts FWIW.
im sorry i should have been more specific...the dt is a 220...it has 2 corner overflows with bulkheads that reduce down to 1 inch flex hose....i just thinking know if i remove the 1 inch fitting underneathe and attach that hose to the outside of the bulkhead i would prb keep the opening 1 1/4 which would help in the over flows...im sure im not describing this well
crazzyreefer
New member
You have a lot of info missing, Pipe size, type and bends, how high is your dump above your DT, will all decide the flow, if you use 1/2 pipe our flow would be, about 24 gal in a minute, or .4 gal per second, easily for your overflows to handle the extra water, but if it is 3" pipe like I use its 2700 Gal per min, 45 gal per second. So as you see its not just the Overflows that need to handle the surge but the DT needs to handle the extra volume of water depending on pipe size, So you want to dump in 30 Gal in a 220gal tank, each inch of tank roughly equals 7.5 gal that means your overflow needs to be at 4" down to handle the extra water, Now I doubt that you will be working with the volume of the entire 30 gal tank but as you see your in trouble, and I understand the overflows will be draining water, but if need to know that you may need to take a gal 5 bucket use a stop watch to see how the over flow handles only 5 gal of water. FYI I use a 30 gal tank on my 1000 gal tank and it reaches all the way up to top rim when multiple valves are dumping the water.
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