Closed loop advice

Delphinus · #1 04-20-2007, 08:13 PM

What do you currently have for circulation?

My biggest concern about CL's is that the pumps tend to have a heavier electrical draw than powerheads. A little easier to hide the hardware though, I suppose, plus you can have eductors. But the one nice thing about things like Tunzes is how ridiculously little electricity they use.

danny zubot · #2 04-20-2007, 09:52 PM

Actually, I haven't given energy consumtion much thought. I'm so sick of dealing with power heads that I just want to get rid of them. Right now I have 3x MJ 1200s and one JBJ ??? its the one that pushes about 600 gph through dual nozels.

If I could get Tunze's for cheeper than a closed loop I'd consider it but I'm doubtful about that.

What are eductors?

Delphinus · #3 04-20-2007, 10:22 PM

My biggest complaint about powerheads is that suction cups suck! Or that.. they fail to suck after a while. I pretty much switched all mine to magnet holders (or clip ons).

Eductors are nozzles on the pipe outputs that use a venturi/bernoulli principle to move more water, you get a fan shaped output of water movement. You need a pressure rated pump though since they put a lot of backpressure on the pump.
http://www.kthsales.com/website/vend...g_eductors.htm

I dunno I'm pretty happy with Tunzes but I agree they're costly. But the energy consumption is definitely a nice payback and they put out a nice flow. I even have one (one of the smaller models) in my FW tank.

On a tank like yours though I guess you're not looking at a huge pump, probably something like a mak4 or something like that would be adequate.

One nice thing you can do with a closed loop, I think people call them Calfo manifolds since Calfo was one who talked about this idea a lot, you create a loop of pipe that sits on the tank perimeter. Then you add as many outputs on T's down into the tank that you want. The nice thing is that this is a great way to get a customized flow pattern, while keeping the majority of the hardware out of sight.

danny zubot · #4 04-20-2007, 10:59 PM

I'm out for the weekend but I will definately be back to discuss on Monday.

marie · #5 04-20-2007, 11:29 PM

Here's some reading for when you get back

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...2003/short.htm

littlesilvermax · #6 04-21-2007, 12:59 AM

If I had that tank I would get an OM 4 -way and a dart pump.

That would arguably be an awesome combo!!!!!!!

Little pricey, but 5 years from now you would say it was the best thing you could have done.

BCOrchidGuy · #7 04-21-2007, 05:37 AM

Power consumption isn't usually a big concern, people figure electricity is cheap at 5.5 cents a kilowatt hour but it can add up quickly. That being said I don't know what kind of power some of these pumps use but for sake of argument lets say one uses or is rated at 100 watts. That means the pump has to run for 10 hours to use 1 Kilowatt hour or 5.5 cents worth of electricity which means if you run the pump 10 hours a day 7 days a week you are looking at 100 watts x 10 (hours) x 31 (days) x 5.5 (cents/hour) = $17 a month give or take a bit. That all being said, if the pump is rated at 1000watts um for sure I'd stay with powerheads. I just did a quick search and found a dart that's rated for 3600gph uses 160 watts a Tunze 6100 is rated at 45 watts so the difference would be with the Dart $27.28 per month vs $7.67 per month for a tunze 6100. I didn't check price difference between the power head and the pump but you'd be looking at $20 a month in electrical usage difference between the two.

Doug