return water flow suggestions

I have a 55 gallon tank that I am replumbing and I have a couple questions. First, the drain (by that I mean the water out of the tank and into filtration) is located directly in the center of the bottom of the tank. There are no overflows so this is the only way to get water out. What would you recomend in the way of standpipe type setups, as this seems to be the only feasible option that I have.

Second, the return is also in the bottom of the tank, but nearer to the tank wall. My plan is to start with FOWLR and graduate to a reef. With that in mind, how could I arrange this return to be most beneficial (height, angle, flow rate, that sort of stuff).

Right now the tank is empty and I just removed the compression style bulkheads that it came with for the purpose of using threaded bulkheads, as this is a hexagonal tank and the rock will have to be stacked around the center standpipe. I guess what I'm getting at is that I have lots of options right now and I want to do it right the first time.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. BTW, any thoughts on a proper amount of in-tank circulation via powerheads, etc. would also be very welcome.

Thanks all

 

Can you post some pics? Luna

 

Make sure the the retrun is designed so that in the event of a power outage it does not siphon all the water from the tank. With that in mind I would have the return pipe at least equal in hight to the stand pipe for the drain. Attached to the return you could attach a snake pipe, that would give you lots of options as far as water direction is concerned.

 

Will get som pictures up soon Luna, and thanks for the post PDCCO, really good stuff that I had not thought of.

 

Here's a couple pics of the tank. You can see the center drain pretty well, but the return is the hole to the rear and right of the center. The other blotch directly behind the the drain is just a hole in the backing paper.

 

Apparently I have issues with posting my pics so here is a link to my gallery...hope this works

http://www.3reef.com/forums/members/chadjwil-albums-empty-tank-picture1498-002.html

 

Its hard to tell from the pictures, but is that tank Acrylic??

 

The best thing that you can do to have a noise-less drain is to install a durso stand pipe and surrond it with LR. Luna

 

yes it is acrylic. I didn't want an acrylic tank but my wife wanted this one bad, so it was this one or none. :-/