gph
 

How many gph should an 80 gallon tank have? I am doing 700 gph right now and I am planning on going to 1100gph. Is that too much? The only problem I have is trying to find a pump that will do 1100 gph at 28 feet straight up to my second floor.

If you are planning on keeping sps corals you need about 40 to 50 times your tank
volume.

Are you talking about sump flow? For sump flow that should be fine. For tank flow use some good power heads.(Koralia, tunze, Seio) The amount of tank flow depends on what your keeping. More for sps, less for lps and softies.

with such a high vertical, you're looking at either a Red Dragon or if I remember correctly, a Sequence Barracuda pump

I am not ready to go with sps yet, so am going with softies and fish. So 1100 GPH would be good, or should Ikeep it at 700? I found 2 pumps that will do 1100 and one will do 700 with a 36 head.

Might as well go with the higher rated pump. That way, when you ARE ready for SPS it won't be too much of a trade off.

You don't need to go nuts with a return from your sump, the only reason to take water from the tank is to feed the skimmer.

get the flow in the tank going with either a closed loop or other devices.

Somewhat agree with Mr OM, your return pump doesn't need to provide all of the displays flow, but nothing wrong with going more than the skimmer's rating either.

I'm running now about 1000gph through my sump without problems and definitely adds to the Dart on the CL.