NEW TO SUMPS!!! need help!

[brewski4u1]

a buddy of mine is getting a 50gallon tank w/ corner overflow i have a 20 long and a 20 high for him as a sump so witch is better?? second what would be the best option for a return pump??


need help asap! were buying stuff online tonight!

[mike_cmu04]

I would go with the 20 long so there is more room for equiptment and a mag 7 for a return.

[sedor]

+1 20 long is a much better option.

[brewski4u1]

OK so hes taking the 20 long!! but on the return pump is a mag 7 gonna be enough or are there other options!

[King_Richard]

Depends on what he's doing. What's the plan on livestock in the tank? Coral need alot of flow, not all but most. A well thought out plumbing scheme can help reduce the amount of gph required. For example I'm building up a seahorse tank for my gf and these things require the low side for flow so I came up w/a nifty spraybar that cover's two sides of the tank on the top, this gives the tank a nice mixed up current which makes it so that most things don't settle into the sand except for a small area near my cleaner shrimps home but the current is still gentle enough for seahorses to swim in it and none of it's a streaming blast of water. My turnover is somewhere around 5-8 times on a 60g cube tank. Alot of people I believe aim for atleast a turnover of 10 times and I've seen up to 20x and I'm sure are some are running more then that. You also need to figure out how high your plumbing is going up from the sump to the display tank, also gotta realize that every time you put a 90 degree bend in your plumbing that your restricting some more flow. I use a rio 1700 that's rated somewhere around 400gph at 4' I've had it for about 7-8yrs, although it wasn't running for about a year.

Just let your buddy know that prep and patience are greatly needed. Don't mean to sound rude but not sure how experienced ya's are and I know how much I rushed my first saltwater tank and blew alot of uneccessary money. Just trying to help ya out since a pump can be found mostly anywhere for that size of a tank.

[brewski4u1]

ok so live stock plan is no more then 5 fish! as for 90degrees there will be 3 may be 4 at max! we were looking at the mag 7 at 700gph for sump return! as for coral he is unsure what he wants but i already gave him a koraline 1 at 400gph and he will prob get another and on the return side go with a split set up unless a spray bar would be better !

[King_Richard]

Cool, so you's do have plans, felt kinda bad earlier about the maybe sounding harsh.

It sounds like the flow is covered then. Just gotta check your head loss to, and I don't have the sight that I used for calculating head loss with 90 elbows anymore but I know there's one out there somewhere. I do remember that I was originally at 4 90's in my test run but ditched one to gain some more flow. Right now I have 3 because I got lazy and didn't want pick up black hoses to help round out my turns on my spray bar.

So the tank will be running around a 20x turnover unless that's not including you headloss for going up in height. I would recommend playing around with making some spray bars, with mine it was pretty easy since its a 24" cube, so I did a side of the tank and then the front because we got a dwarf seahorse that couldn't tolerate direct flow from on bar. The spray bars help to evenly distribute your flow which will minimize your dead spots and if you do something similar to where there's two spray bars that can mix flow then you'll also start to get that nice sway that you can see in some corals or grass beds.

I would set up one pump to run a spray bar, 2, 3, maybe wrapped all around if you get enough flow out of em. Then I would use the other pump for some direct flow if he plan's on getting some swimmers (like tangs, triggers, etc...) since they usually seem to like to swim towards them from end to end of the tank. Alot of it will come down to the rock work that gets setup and tinkering with it. But after using spray bars I'll never use anything else for my pumps that come from the sump.

Either way I think the turnover rate is definitly good. Sorry I couldn't help ya too much but brains slowin down right now. If run across anything I'll put up a link for ya.

The only other thing is what's going in the sump? With that much flow if plan on using a refugium or dsb then you'll have to create some barriers to slow the water down in those area's or else everything will blow everywhere.