lastlight's 404

[golf nut]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Ok if I understand correctly this will work.

Green is my returns, yellow my intakes, red my outputs.

Should the returns be 1.5" and the drains 2"?

The principle is correct, you may well need more outlets in the bottom due to the length and size of the tank, depending on your personal preference, outlets could be 1 1/2 or 1" .

Drain bulkheads would be 1 1/2, there is no head loss to pumps in closed loops, the head from the tank will feed more than the pump needs, you can use 2" but isn't etched in stone.

It's now 2:15am here and I need to be up in a few hours, 15 more minutes of Top Gear on BBC and I am off to bed, catch you all in the morning.

[lastlight]

Paul thanks for the detailed response. To quickly clear a few things up...the room is only 12 feet across and I don't really want to rotate the tank.

The rockwork will be well away from both the front pane and the rear pane. I don't like rock touching the back wall (or even being close to it). Easy access means I can get in to scrape it clean. I'm going to paint both side and rear panes so you are free to put holes wherever you wish there.

The overflow box in the model is only 12" high. I don't imagine I need to make it narrower to incorporate outlets that flank it higher up as that will flow against the returns.

The tidal thing just sounds neat but really I just want my flow to be hidden as well as possible and to be a bit random with one of your units. Random or at least varied as with the tidal thing.

Thanks!

[golf nut]

As with any build I have to read between lines, especially when using emails , phone calls usually get quicker results as tone of voice and hesitation can be sensed quickly.

Given the proposed design, the first option that would work would to be simply do the barrel roll system down the length of the tank, looking at the tank from the seating area with the overflow on the right the whole tanks volume would move in a clockwise manner, surface water left to right, lower water right to left, this would be accomplished by outlets coming from the bottom up all outlets would be pushing water to the left , this would be switched from outlet to outlet repeatedly placing large volumes of water at different progressive locations down the length of the tank, in recent years this has been called a gyre, trust me it is the same thing sexed up a little, I still call it a barrel roll.

You would see no plumbing, it would speed up and slow down and as a result there would be an inclination for corals to grow in favor of that direction, however the slow and fast move apparently doesn't have as much directional growing as a fixed closed loop without any speed /switching change.

C/L pump feeds would be accomplished by multiple feeds buried in the rock work, these in turn would point towards where the flow is coming from to enhance flow, multiple drains will give better coverage,reduce velocity to avoid sucking in critters and protect flow reduction in the future because of the excessive feeds, stay away from screens that stop sand from entering the drains, place them where it will not see sand, fine screens will clog.

Ponder this and will await your response.

Paul

[lobsterboy]

wow Brett, this is awesome, you must be stoked.

congrats.

[Funky_Fish14]

LOL @ the 404 error.

Brett, i think you should change it to 405, to avoid any 'error' causing the build to be incomplete... and up to 405 rather than down to 403, avoiding a downgrade! Haha.

I hope this one comes together for your just the way you'd like man! And again, let me know if I can help out with anything!

Cheers,

Chris