Design question

I think I may just go with Eshopps dual overflow(rated at 900 GPH). and the Rio HF20.

 

ive always had RIOs fail.have they redesigned them?if not id go with another pump.

 

hmmmmmmmmmm dunno. But I have had a Rio 1700 running one of my aquariums for about 5 years now, no problems. I guess it's just hit or miss.:-/

 

Tank flows can be as high as 50x tank size inside the tank for SPS. Let's just say 40x, so for your 150g, that's 6000 gph internal flow in your tank for your corals.

Now you want to take that 6000gph.....that's 52,560,000 gallons per year....use gravity and drop it down to your sump.... then you want to use a pump to pump it up hill, overcome 4 foot of head pressure, and dump it back to your tank.

Hers some math... One Mp40 does 3200 gph... so put 2 in your tank... two MP 40s at 6400 gph will draw 56 watts of power. 4 K4s will move 4800 gph and use 34 watts.

A BL 70hd pump moves 1750 gph and uses 280 watts. So really you will need 3 of them. Although they do have a cut off of 39 feet. So for 5250 gph, you will use 840 watts per hour. That is what gravity does for you.

Yet all I need on my tank is a Ehiem 1262 throttled back to move 600gph. That costs me 80w at most. Using the same for tank flow....10 of those... would be 800 watts compared to 54w for two MP40s.

So running one BL 70hd compared to a MP40 with twice the flow is a difference of 252w per hour.... which comes to 181 killowatt hours per month. Using the average residential electric rates for Pennsylvania... that's $20.86 to run one pump. $240 dollars per year will buy a lot of pumps.

Using a return pump to provide flow in the tank is an incredibly inefficient way to move water.

 

dude, well said. this is why i went to closed loop.

regarding the powerhead plan - i'd say that it's hard to get a good distribution of flow in your tank with just one powerhead - you'll find many dead spots. also you end up with laminar, organized flow if the ph is always on, which isn't the greatest for getting things to grow.

 

All you want to turn over for filtration purpouses is 4x72 galls pre hr. and that is 286 GPH or 6,912 GPday and right a total of 97 time's times per day the skimmer gets a whak at the water and that is optium or damn near perfect, Now for internel flows then as many GPH as you want tom have swirling around all depeneds on the coral types you keep .

 

Powerman........thanks for the insight. I will definitely be looking at my plans again.

 

No problem Veedub. You are not the only one that hates powerheads... but that is where closed loops come in. You want a high flow pump, not a high pressure pump. Move lots of water, no head loss. I have not figured out what I want in the future... stick with MP40s, or do closed loop. I would really like to do a gyre tank. Sounds cool.

 

Thanks for the replys... Everyday I change my setup plan.... lol

 

just looked this up - at work i can't see the 'advanced aquarist' article on gyre tanks, but it looks like its from 2007. any details on these and how to do it?