gate valve or ball valve?

The plumbing seems a little too complicated.

Why not just run a tee off the return line with a ball valve on it for feeding the fuge, and eliminate all those 90 degree bends for the return line?


Also, for the drain line, if you do it 100% straight up and down you will get some gurgling. I had my drain on my 90g that way, and i ended up making a gurgle buster out of a PVC tee, and an elbow with another piece of PVC and a cap on that with a small hole. That worked so well I used the same setup on my 200g tank's drain. Now I did angle the drain line at around a 45 degree angle and that make it much better.

 

I will angle the drain a bit. But up top, in the overflow of the display tank, I do have that same setup with the hole drilled. That was supplied by the tank manufacturer.

There would be a tee on the return running to the fuge, but also another tee that will send the extra flow back through my sump. The other option is to take the drain line, and tee it, so that some flow will go to the fuge, and the rest to the skimmer section. That way, the return will only have 1 tee back to the skimmer. I wasn't sure if this is ok, since I wouldn't be running any kind of filter on the drain feeding the fuge directly.

 

here's the 2nd option.

 

What is your reasoning of recircing the return back to the skimmer? Water movement equals power consumption. All you need to do is throttle your return pump period with a valve. By recircing water you waste power.

The skimmer and fuge should get raw tank water to work with. So that is good to tee your drain. I too worried about "dirtying up" my fuge, but I have no problem with build up using raw tank water to the fuge. If I ever did, using a filter sock form time to time would not be that big of a deal. But you want to feed the fuge with the most fuel to work with.

 

i was under the impression that just a valve on the return line would affect the lifespan of the pump as opposed to a "recirculating return" line going back into the sump. would also allow for adjusting flow back into the tank, or to completly "shut-off" the sump without turning anything electrical off

 

Simply adding a valve to reduce the flow from the return pump usually is bad on pumps. I would not advise doing that.
If you want to throttle the pump down, it is better to have a recirc line as you have in diagram 2.

The gurgling will still happen even with that factory durso.

If it is an AGA/ aqueon with the megaflow, that is exactly what I had on my 90g. You will need to make a simple gurgle buster, but that is an easy addition.

 

The pump will use whatever wattage regardless of putting a valve to throttle it back on the output. All that will happen is the pump will still use the same watts, but instead heat up more, reducing its lifespan.

 

That's what I was concerned about, because my understading is that if I try to regulate the flow without recirculating, then the pump will work that much harder to battle the pressure.

And yes, it appears that I will be needing the "gurlge buster". lol, off to search to find some details.

So looks like I will be going with option 2. The picture is just to make it obvious where stuff is going. I will try to minimize any bends/90s.

 

I'll have to take a pic of what came with the tank. I think it might have already had some variation of this mod done.

 

I will post a pic. You need to have the gurgle buster on the bottom in the sump. Anything done up in the tank won't affect the water entering the sump.