New Tank Build Advice

[williamchill]

Ok so I've been wanting to upgrade to a reef tank for some time, and with remodeling the house I've finally got a chance to build a room divider style tank.

The stand has been partially built and there is still time for changes to be made. The size is 267.3cm wide, 75.5cm front to back and 103cm depth. 2cm thick glass

There is 8cm at each end that will be hidden in the fake walls as seen to the left and right in the photo, which im hoping to hide the overflows in. This is where I need your advice, will the overflows be big enough?? (71.5cm front to back and 8cm wide X2)

And if so how many stand pipes should I put in each end and what diameter shold they be?

Thanks in advance
Will

[WinnipegDragon]

Flow through your sump can be pretty minimal, roughly 5x the tank volume is fine per hour.

You have 522 gallons in your tank, give or take, so you want about 1000gph through your sump. You can achieve that with 2 1" drains pretty easily.

[WaterKeeper]

Hi William

To Reef Central

Impressive first tank I must say. If my math is right I come up with a 550 U.S gallon tank. Using our drain overflow calculator I come up with a minimum drain pipe diameter of 1.37 inches (3.5 cm) and an overall weir length of 17 linear inches (43 cm). That should be fine for your design. I'd place one overflow on each end and sized each to handle the full flow in case one gets blocked. I used a 20 to one return rate of 1100 gph (4164 liters/hr) for the calculation.

Hope that helps and the calculator is found Here.

[williamchill]

Thanks for your warm welcome and kind advice. I really have bitten of more than I can chew so I really do apreciate the help.

So the 2 "Weir's" at each end will be big enough, this comes as good news and 2 drains (one at each end) of 3.5cm diameter this is enough but if I put in 4 drians of 3.5cm diameter (one in each corner) then im covering any problems with a blocked drain. Did I understand that corectly?

After reading your posts I did think about having 2 drains that are 7cm each but ive only got 8cm on each end in the fake wall, and i need to give 4cm for the thickness of the glass (2cm for the walls of the tank and 2cm for the weir.

One more question before I go to bed and order the glass tommorow. I need to think about returning the water to the tank, again I'd like to do this through the fake walls and weir's, is this a good idea? or should I really be thinking about returning the water in some diferent locations?

Thanks Again
Will

[WaterKeeper]

Will,

You lost me there; one drain with a 3.5 cm pipe being fed by an overflow box with 43 cm of total overflow length is enough all by itself. I recommend having two of that dimension, one at each end of the tank, to give you a safety factor. If you wish a higher return rate you could add more but that configuration I gave you should serve that sized tank.

As for the return, there are a number of methods to do it. The simple one is just a pipe from the return pump that lifts the water to the tank then has two 90° elbows to return it to just under the water surface. Just like a faucet spigot. It is simple and requires the smallest pump since there is minimal friction loss. If you look around our DIY forum you'll find other designs.