[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by nlreefguy

Thanks a lot, I'd be interested to hear what he has to say. I only want to do this once i.e. the right way the first time! I have wasted so much money on equipment upgrades since I started the hobby, it would boggle the mind!

ok, so few questions first, are you drilling for a sump? and are you planning on having a sand bed?

the reason I ask, is in this size of tank is it almost impossable to get a good ballanced flow rate with sand with out resitricting most of the flow to the top 1/3 of the tank. I ended up with 4 tunze 6060's two seio's and and two Mak4 for return in my tank giveing me a water movement equivalant of 104X in the display. it was gental flow anywhere in the tank but I would have never been able to achieve this with sand.

if you are thinking closed loop, forget it with a 3 sidded viewing tank. if you were only viewing 2 sides, the best way to do a closed loop on this size would be to drill 6 holes on each end about 1 to 1.5" and put a big bad pump on that pushing about 5 to 7000 gph to create a current accros the tank then a few powerfull power heads to randomly mix it up a bit. but.

as for pumps, vertex look good, but if you want seriouse flow I would go with 4 20's in that tank. the problem will be hiding the wires as you want one down low and one higher.. you can get away with 2 but I can tell you that you will have lots of dead spots with low flow depending on how your rock is set up and how much you use. as for the 2 20's or 1 40. forget about trying to do it with one pump the dynamics in this size of tank will not give you good flow at all.

now there is another way to obtain lots of flow with with fewer pumps but it requires a specific set up for your rock for it to work.

Steve