Zum14's 90Gal-As reef as I can get it.

[whatcaneyedo]

I tried 45 degree elbows for the outputs of my returns initially as well but I found they just shot water right to the bottom which blew sand around and 90 degree looked like the wake behind a boat. So I cut an angle at the end of the 90 and that worked best. With your smaller return pump you might be alright though.

No time for a longer post right now.

[FishyFishy!]

What kind of overflow are you going to run? Are you planning on an internal wier? Or just leaving the holes as overflows?

[Madreefer]

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

What kind of overflow are you going to run? Are you planning on an internal wier? Or just leaving the holes as overflows?

Yea what this guy is asking^^^

I'd like to rip my tank apart and take my overflows out and do that very thing with the holes.
Good to see your setting up again and off to a nice start. We need more tanks in town.

[zum14]

Originally Posted by whatcaneyedo

I tried 45 degree elbows for the outputs of my returns initially as well but I found they just shot water right to the bottom which blew sand around and 90 degree looked like the wake behind a boat. So I cut an angle at the end of the 90 and that worked best. With your smaller return pump you might be alright though.

No time for a longer post right now.

Hey, Thanks. Ill have to watch for that. Im kind of going for the lower turnover through the sump and using the main flow from the vortechs. (ideally closed loop could provide the high flow but im very uneasy drilling all them holes in a tank that im not sure is designed for it )

Originally Posted by FishyFishy!

What kind of overflow are you going to run? Are you planning on an internal wier? Or just leaving the holes as overflows?

Take a bean animal and instead of the 2 main elbows turning down they will all be turned up. Ideally I was going to do an internal overflow box and have a bean animal overflow but due to the tank only being 18" front to back it would have closed off way too much of the tank. So its just going to be ugly elbows in the tank but oh well. It will work. Ill take some pics when the waters flowing to give you an idea.

Originally Posted by Madreefer

Yea what this guy is asking^^^

I'd like to rip my tank apart and take my overflows out and do that very thing with the holes.
Good to see your setting up again and off to a nice start. We need more tanks in town.

Hey. See above. Do you want an internal overflow box? If your ripping your tank apart id look into doing an external box, all the surface skimming and nothing to see. I find it quite amazing that other towns around our size have 2 or 3 nice stores but not us. Oh well. Just have to wait a bit longer. Havent seen an updated pic on your tank lately. Hows it doing?

[Madreefer]

Hey Tyler, I have 2 internal overflows but I want to take them out to free up some more tank room. I'd like to use the four holes in the bottom of the tank just for return lines and drill a couple of holesi n the back upper corners of my tank and use them to drain to my sump. Not sure what the method is called but just a gravity drain. Its how I have my fuge plumbed. Last I seen my tank it was looking pretty good. My wife says everything looks good. I'm working out of province so no idea. I'm home for a week at the begining of March and going to be throwing some fluke tabs in it to kill off my clove polyps. You'll have to come over for a pop and have a bullchit.

[zum14]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

Hey Tyler, I have 2 internal overflows but I want to take them out to free up some more tank room. I'd like to use the four holes in the bottom of the tank just for return lines and drill a couple of holesi n the back upper corners of my tank and use them to drain to my sump. Not sure what the method is called but just a gravity drain. Its how I have my fuge plumbed. Last I seen my tank it was looking pretty good. My wife says everything looks good. I'm working out of province so no idea. I'm home for a week at the begining of March and going to be throwing some fluke tabs in it to kill off my clove polyps. You'll have to come over for a pop and have a bullchit.

Sounds good. I think I understand what you want to do but that may cause some interesting problems. Im sure you will come up with something.

[zum14]

Update.

So first I must ask you please excuse the murky water as what I thought was a good sand rinse job was quite obviously p*ss poor. Anyways. I ran into a problem. When I got this tank it already had 2 holes in the back upper corners so I pretty much decided on an internal "calfo" coast to coast with a bean animal overflow. Well. Drilled the one extra hole, got the bulkheads and elbows in, measured for the internal box. Nope. 18" wide tank with a 6" internal box. Nope. So ugly elbows it is. I figure I will leave them turned up and will get at least some surface skimming. Well problem #1. As you can see I have one elbow on the syphon line that has been cut off at the top of the bulkhead, basically as low as I can get it. The second line is there as the balance.



So everyone knows you need a certain amount of head pressure above the fitting to maintain a syphon so you dont get the whirl pool sucking air problem. Well due to the small size of my sump and the amount of water needed to maintain the syphon I was either left with not enough water in my sump or the fitting sucking air. Solutions. Well I cant add any water to the system as when everything is unplugged the tank drains to the lowest elbow and I have about 1" of room left in the sump. So lower the tank water level, sump level is good but then it sucks air in the syphon. Hmm. Cant turn the elbow upside down, works good for not sucking air but then the tank wants to drain to the lower edge of the bulkhead and there just isnt enough room in the sump for the extra water. This problem plus the added noise of the water running into the socks and through the sump was just unacceptable. So instead of trying to keep tweeking things I figured Id better nip it in the bud now. I didnt really want to pay for a large pump to pump the water up from the basement but I think its the proper thing to do in this case. This----




Now looks like this----




And this---



Please excuse the paneling. Havent renovated the laundry room yet. Oh well. The plumbing on the overflows runs about 11 horizontal feet and about 12 vertical feet. Im not too worried though, guys are running 1 1/2" overflows on other systems running larger pumps so even with the extra elbows I think I will be ok.








Im not too worried about the pump getting enough flow to the tank either. Its only a 90 gallon and if the barracuda isnt strong enough I can throw the hammerhead impeller in and watch that meter fly. Ah whatever right. I apologize for the crappy photos. Another one of those thought I did ok and well you know the rest. (maybe a new camera will go on this years xmas list) Up next will be giving the sump a good scrub. Figuring out a catch box and filter sock for the syphon and balance line, (going to leave emergency out of the socks ) and then when the return pump arrives I will be plumbing in the suction and return for that, trying to decide if I should run a spears check valve on the return as thats a lot of air in the return line to be pushed out at the tank, makes for a lot of splash. However check valves can be bad too. Not sure there. Then get the Apex wired up and programmed as I wont run this tank now without it. Too much water downstairs that could all end up upstairs. I dont care about downstairs, its sloped heavily to a drain 6' away. No biggie. Still trying to decide on a skimmer. I know the old beckett style skimmers are power hogs but there proven and you can find some used for a good deal. The new cone skimmers are looking nice but I wonder about the quality on some of the lower models. I have had good luck in the past with bubble magus but I see theres a recall on some of there pumps. I dont really want to spend $1000 plus on an Alpha. The omega looks promising but might be a bit small now for the total water volume I will have now. Im guessing closer to 200Gal now. Oh well. It does solve my noise and water syphon issues completely though so thats nice.