Water pressure question

[mattnano]

I have been searching for a while and cant find anything that is really helping. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

I am building an 80 gallon FOWLR tank with 1 inch PVC pipes that goes down through the sub floor to the basement. This is my problem, I don't want any powerheads in my display so I would like to have about 800-900 gph going through my sump and back up into the tank. The one inch PVC is going to be my limiting factor. My question is should I have the tank drilled for 1.5 inch bulk heads to have extra pressure going down to the 1 inch PVC pipes? Will I be able to pump 800-900 GPH through this type of set up or is the 1 inch PVC too bunch of a bottleneck? Here is a picture for an idea of what I am talking about.



Thanks in advance!!
-Matt

 

[snulma1]

as an alternate idea, since you will likely have a microbubble problem trying to use your return as your only source of flow for your display, why not do a closed loop for your flow? keeps powerheads out of your tank and doesnt force you to worry about bottlenecks.

 

[mattnano]

Thanks for the reply snulma1! Can you elaborate on what will cause microbubbles? I would like to avoid a closed loop if possible. The return will be after two bubble traps through my sump. Water will be pumped 10 feet back up to the tank. I have kept a reef successfully for 6 years with no major crashes but never really dabbled in fish only. Figured I could get away with a bit less flow then my reef.

 

[mchammer]

I built my 120 in wall tank with the same idea as you. I wanted my main pump to give me the most amount of flow without the use of power heads. I had to use two power heads to get the amount of flow that I needed. I was getting micro bubbles in my display tank even though I had bubble traps. Most of the problem with the micro bubbles was due to the pre filter on my return pump. It was trapping air and then creating bubbles in my main tank. Even when I removed my pre filter I was still getting micro bubbles in my main tank until I turned down my flow rate to around 700-800 GPH. I'm not sure why this is but that is my experience with flow and micro bubbles.