Recommendation about return pump

[ac7av]

You’ve been here for longer then I have. I’m the new one.

I never felt you were starting anything at all. I’m just trying to understand why you do what you do. There is not one best way to do anything in this hobby. Like I said if it works great for you then no need to change anything.

I think you will find that if you add up all the small low wattage pumps used to power the small devices it would not come close to the power consumption of that one large pump. And like you said if your pump goes out you better have a backup. At the $300 level of that pump I can buy a lot of quiet one 4000’s that I have for a return pump. I only have 135 watts of power consumption from 4 pumps. With these 4 pumps I’m running some where around 8,000 gallons per hour total water flow in the system. Usually the return or circulation pumps like that are not very efficient at moving a large amount of water. Average watt usage for your pump is 98 watts. Not to bad for a pump that will push 12 feet.

I’m a little confused about what your doing with 2200gph threw the over flow? 600 going threw the fuge but what’s the rest going threw. 600gph sounds just about right for your tank. Why do you need to run power heads in the fuge? You should try for slow non turbulent flow to allow the fuge to do its job and let heavy partials settle out. If you keep is stirred up that won’t happen.

Instead of running a bunch of parallel circuits for the water flow why did you not run them in series and go for a lower wattage, lower volume pump to do the same job. Is there a benefit in running the fuge and mechanical filtration devices in parallel?

BTW I trying to help get your post number up. Hehe. Is it helping yet?

 

[pledosophy]

I happy I am not coming across wrong. I don't post here to often so I jsut wanted to clarify where I was coming from, just in case. I do appreciate your assistance on my side mission. I am just not the type to post good job 49x.

In my sump there is about 2200gph running through after head loss:

1200 through the 125g display
600 through the refugium
the rest is divided between the calcium reactor, the skimmer, and the phosphate reactor.

I toyed with the idea of daisy chaining my drains to feed the skimmer, or reactors but previous experience taught me it is not a good idea to put restrictions on drains.

As far as costs, I traded a few tyree leather frags for it, I had no out of pocket cost, which at the time was the main determining factor for this pump. I have used the Loud Ones in the past and i am just not happy with there performance overall. Like I said previously I am a noise freak. My bedroom system is so quiet that if it is on or off there is no audible difference from 3 feet away. I just hate noise. That is also my reason for wanting to switch to a Red Dragon soon, and keeping my current pump for a back up.

I have been doing refugiums for about 10 years now and IME they do best with about 30x turnover. My refugium is not your typical ball of chaeto, but an additional display sans fish. I am currently keeping 10 species of macro algae and the tank has about 80 lbs of rubble rock to give pods a home. I have found letting detritus settle is a bad thing and like to keep it in suspension for the dry skimming. Combining that with the rest of my practices has proven to be quite good for me. I feed my system a ridiculous amount of food (about 10 cubes a day) and I have 0 nuissance algae in my display and run nitrates of less then 1ppm.

I did consider having my refugium gravity fed into my display but for viewable height it was kind of to close and not a spot I wanted to drill another hole in the wall at. I plan on adding some shelves and 6 frag tanks to my system this winter and the hole for the refugium would have been right where the shelfing had to be so I compromised. instead the refugium drains right to the return chamber.

Now I think I am just rambling trying to get to the elusive 30 posts. Maybe I will go do some, nice tank posts

 

[ac7av]

It certainly sound like you have an interesting system and others would probably like to see and here about what you’re doing. Maybe you could start you own tank build thread and you can ramble all day long about your system and I’m sure lots of people will stop buy and read about it. If you want to of coarse. Mine kind of goes in spurts when I have the time. I should have started my build years ago.

 

[pledosophy]

That might be a good idea, thanks for the suggestion. Perhaps it could also aid my quest in reaching the elusive 50 posts.

 

[khaosinc]

I'd agree w/ the ehimes or one of the smaller mag drives. Generally pretty tough, and easy to replace or get parts for if they do have issues.