Why do we assume a large return pump is needed?

[mobert]

Mona, do you have any fans to cool off your tank?

http://www.melevsreef.com/acrylics/fan_tray.html
http://www.melevsreef.com/acrylics/cooling.html

I have six fans what looks like 4 1/2" fans on the cabinet. Three above the lights shooting up and 3 in the base. I will add fans a big window fan in my cabinet to blow across the water and I like that in sump fan mount. I'll work on that one.

Thank you so much everyone for your help. I also raised the set point on the chiller from 79 to 81. But, gosh, this room feels so much cooler now. I'd rather pay the electricity cost to cool me and the tank rather than just the tank!

 

[mwood]

Are you venting the heat from the chiller outside or leting it heat the room?

 

[mobert]

Are you venting the heat from the chiller outside or leting it heat the room?

Unfortunately, it is heating the room. No easy way to vent out. So whatever I do to make it come on less will be great. The window fans are two 9" fans that are now angled at 45 degrees accross the water pointing toward the back opening. In the last 20 minutes the temp hads come down .3 degrees.

 

[mobert]

I may be able to squeeze two of these in the cabinet:

 

[melev]

As long as they don't fall in the water and create an electrical hazard, I don't see a problem.

 

[mwood]

You could try a DIY cooling tower.

 

[get-r-done]

Hi

I like the idea of low turn over in tanks. I think this is a great idea and has many benefits. I want to set up my new tank in this configuration with a turn over of 2-3 times per hour. , here is my question.

My new tank is a 220 gallon AGA. I plan to have it viewable from 3 sides so I do not want to have alot of input tubing and returns blocking the viewing area. the tank came with 4 holes pre-drilled into the bottom. All are 1.75" dia and are spaced along one of the long sides. I am going to position the tank perpendicular to the wall as a room divider so you will be able to see thru the front, back and one of the narrow sides.

I want to minimise the plumbing that would be in the viewing area so could I get by with the following?

I plug 3 of the 4 holes in the bottom of the tank and make the 4th hole ( the hole closest to the wall ) the outlet. It will handle a 1"dia Durso stand pipe. so this should give me about 600 GPH flow out of the tank into the sump. I can plumb the input to the tank with some 1" dia PVC and have it come from the sump, up and hook over the side of the tank next to the wall. I could use a return pump with minimal flow ( say 400 to 500 GPH at 6 feet of head ) to be used as the return back to the tank.
For water movement inside the tank I plan to use some 6100 TUNZE Streams.


Does this seem like it will work? is the turn over too small? Is a singl output a problem?

I appreciate any and all comments. Will this work or is this a disaster waiting to happen..

thanks


Jim

 

[melev]

Jim, while I advocate 3x to 5x the volume of the display, on tanks that are larger like yours and mine, I do aim for higher flow through the sump due to the increased surface area that needs to be skimmed clean. My tank has a sump that is 5' long, so even with 3000gph going through it, there are no microbubbles at all.

As Herbert has pointed out, many people are trying to use monster pumps under their tanks to create all the flow. Like a guy with a 29g and a Mag 9.5 - way too much pump and a micro-bubble nightmare in most cases.

I would suggest you allow for two drains, even if your goal is merely 600gph drainage. That way if one is clogged, the other can compensate and keep up - your floors will remain dry.

You should design some kind of surface skimming box to put around your drain/durso standpipes, to avoid the film that accumulates on the surface. Tunze Streams will be great in your tank.

 

[get-r-done]

Marc

thanks for the info.

I am going to see how I can route another pipe along the inside bottom of the tank, ( this could then be buried under sand and rock ) bring it up alside the first down tube and enclose both down tubes in an enclosure to capture the film on top.

how does that sound??

Jim

 

[melev]

The biggest danger with plumbing running deeply is if it ever backsiphons out and drains your tank down to the substrate. Yes, a wet floor will be the result, but the losses of livestock would be horrific.

Anti siphon holes can help. Sketch out your idea and post images for others to look at.

 

[mwood]

You can see in the background how I keep my tank from draining down to the sand. I run the pvc up to the level I want, and then drop it to the sump using a T. The thing you need to be carefull of is it will slow the drain. You may need to experiment a little.

 

[Herbert T. Kornfeld]

I too use one of my tanks as a room divider...viewable from 3 sides, sticking the long ways into the room. Even though it is only a 40B, you might want to steal some ideas for flow. A fake back wall made of acrylic would allow you to hide closed loop(s) and your overflow very well behind a solid wall.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53988&perpage=20&pagenumber=2

Although in this example I do not use a sump, I do have a 1" bulkhead in the back corner that could be opened up easily if I decided to add one. You could use a similar setup. At least with 'end-on' tanks I think its the way to go.

As far as your overflow, and keeping the surface clear, you could go down to 200-300gph for your overflow turnover and still be fine. Surface area is proportional to volume, and yours has less than some other tanks that I see running on waaay less. The key is to manipulate the flow that goes on inside the tank so it pushes the surface water into the overflow at some point. Sure, this might be easier with dual overflows (or more linear overflow area) or more flow, but not a need.

As far as a backup overflow, well....if you have your primary overflow so tightly adjusted that you could overflow it (with valves and small diameter plumbing), a backup is a good idea. But if you have only a few hundred gph or so going down a 1.5" or 1" downpipe...I dont see a need. I dont understand how your durso and all will work because I dont know what your oveflow box and all will be like, so no comment on that...but it all sounds good so far.

The one thing that I agree with Mark on 100% is that a diagram would be very helpful for us to help you.

 

[get-r-done]

Herbert/Mark

I have taken some rough picture of the tank as it is now. The down tube is what came with the tank The manufacture says it will handle 600 GPH but I have never seen anyone else in all of Reef Crentral talk about this kind. I have a similar type of over flow in an over flow box on the back side of my 90 gallon . It is quiet and seems to work. If you think this system is fine then I will stick with it..

In one of the pictures you can see where I want to place a down tube. In the next hole cut into the bottom of the tank toward the center I thought I coud put in a bulk head then put a 90 elbow off that and using 1" tubing run it to the short side of the tank next to the one standing. I figured I could cover the pipe in the sand bottom. Maybe use silicon to keep it stable and add support.

If you think that these downtubes are not sufficient I could build an enclosure around these two outputs and put Durso stand pipes in thier place ( if Durso is better than what I currently have ).


I could then bring the water from the sump up over the end of the tank by the cabinet shown ( no hole cut there yet )

Hope this explanation and the photos help to understand my plans better. Let me know your opinions, good or bad.

Thanks.

Jim

 

[skyfireblaze]

[QUESTION]

Hopefully this won't distract from Jim's ?'s (which I'm interested in following as well), but as far as I can remember I can't recall anyone talking about using this low-flow method with a HOB overflow. I'm going back through the thread to double check, but I've been following along since the beginning ...

So what about HOB overflows? Herbert (and everyone else of course), do you see any problems with only flowing ~150 gph through a Lifereef/Amiracle style HOB overflow?

[/QUESTION]

 

[sjm817]

[QUESTION]

Hopefully this won't distract from Jim's ?'s (which I'm interested in following as well), but as far as I can remember I can't recall anyone talking about using this low-flow method with a HOB overflow. I'm going back through the thread to double check, but I've been following along since the beginning ...

So what about HOB overflows? Herbert (and everyone else of course), do you see any problems with only flowing ~150 gph through a Lifereef/Amiracle style HOB overflow?

[/QUESTION]

Yes, it can be a problem if you go too low. You have to have enough flow to keep the U Tube clear of accumulated air. The number is somewhere around 200 GPH or so.

 

[melev]

<b>Get-r-done</b>, I've seen those once before in some advertising or on a website. If you follow the article GregT wrote some type back about sumps and plumbing, he explains how the surface area needs to be skimmed adequately to keep the area clear. Because of the shape of your tank, I would personally set it up with one of those in each corner, as the skimming radius of each one is quite small. The link to Greg's articles are all at the base of this webpage: http://www.melevsreef.com/what_sump.html

With that setup, I don't see the need for a Durso application.


<b>xchrisjb</b>, exactly what sjm817 stated. With slower flow through an HOB overflow, smaller airbubbles can not wash through and out. As more and more accumulate in the U tube, less water flows through the pipes. It could even lose siphon at one point, but in my experience when this occurs the tank tends to fill up a little higher and the surface begins to accumulate a lot of oily residue. Whenever I saw that, I knew it was time to clean and adjust the HOB overflow again.

 

[Herbert T. Kornfeld]

OR, you could raplace that 1.5" U-tube with a narrower one to make its cross-sectional flow the same as if it were the full size pipe with 200+gph. Most HOB overflows like the old-school Amiracles and Lifereefs use the 1.25" or 1.5" (or multiple ones at that), so simply cutting down the size of the U-tubes (or the amount of them) takes care of the accumulation problem. Or, if you have a CPR style, you should have invested in one of those aqualifter pumps anyways which would make it a non-issue.

When I had a 125g set up fir african cichlids back in the day, I used an Amiracle overflow and only had an eheim 1250 as my return...so the throughput was about 200gph...never had a siphon break.

 

[Herbert T. Kornfeld]

get-r-done,
That pipe must be about 1.5" on the inside diameter it looks like. Sure, it could easily run up to 600gph through it, but it might get noisy. I have seen one of those in action (LFS a while ago had one set up), and they blow in the noise department. The best way to cut back on that noise would be to cut your overflow down to 200gph...that should be enough. As for flow, one or two larger Tunzes should be enough...I would say one 6200, but if your rockwork splits the tank down the middle then one for each side would be better.

I do see a problem with the overflow as far as scum buildup. Because of its orientation, the overflow and most likely all of the tank's flow will be coming from one end. The water will surge in one direction...away from the wall...and possibly trap surface scum against that outside glass. I had this happen even in my little 40B with 900gph going through the overflow. The point is that even with high flow, you can still have dead zones on the surface, it has nothing to do with flow rates...so a low flow overflow can still do the job if set up right...it all depends on setting it up right.

In your case, you are going to have to figure out some way to make the surface water come back to the overflow. One way would be to position those streams so they blow across the bottom, bounce water against the glass upward, and the water flow across the top will be directed into the overflow. When the Tunzes are higher up, the water could flow across the top and downward once it hits the glass...leaving behind the surface scum at the top...trapping it. OR, you could look at that thread on the 40B...see that 'Stealth Pipe'? You could run your return line like that, and have it blowing back across the surface towards the overflow. At least in between timed flows it would get a chance to push any dead zones to the overflow.

 

[RGibson]

H erbert the change of by return pump from a Iwaki MD55RLT to a eheim 1260 on my 180 gal reef tank has pass the 4 mo mark and has work very well. I though i would let you know.

 

[mobert]

I did dremel the oveflow pretty good. My slots are shaved about twice as big and go all the way to the top. I never thought of blocking off the bottom slots. That may be an option but I cannot think of an easy way to do it without removing all my rock.

I guess I can chalk this on up to another "if I had to do over again" issue.

Regarding the AGA megaflows, I just stuffed a piece of 1/2" clear vinyl hose cut to length in the baffle right behind the megaflow teeth. Looks like it's doing the trick.

So today with the air conditioner set at 74, the fans blowing accross the water, and one of the three 400 watt halides off, my temperature is fluctuating between 79.4 and 79.9 on my 210 AGA. Chiller did not come on today. So I have the Blueline HD 70 as the return through the chiller. I'm thinking should I leave the plumbing as is and have the ability to on occasion turn on all the halides? The Blueline is 240 watts versus one Eheim for the return at 80 watts and if I keep the chiller, another 80 watts. The top of my tank is 6 feet off the ground and the AGA overflows have 3/4" pipe that tee's into two flexible returns each. The Eheim may not have enough flow to pull the temperature down with the head pressure. There is space behind the tank if I wanted to go over the top. This is a new tank, and I may be able to return the pump and chiller.

Can I have the Blueline on the chiller turn on only at a set temperture determined by my Aquacontroller II or would that leave stagnant water in the line?