Plumbing Question

[AktionJaxsun]

Hello all,

I am currently in the process of modifying my 20 gallon tank. I was wondering what problems I would run into if the return lines entered through the bottom of my display tank. My thoughts are to drill into the bottom my tank and have four outlets (2 per mag7). Obviously the outlets would extend through the sand and be surrouned by live rock so as not be seen when looking at the tank. What are your thoughts? Will I have to do anything special for this type of configuration? Are there major problems associated with doing this?

If you neeed to know more about my tank. Please see this thread.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=851024

Thanks,
Patrick

[Avast Marine]

I can think of none. There are a few people that use a flow pattern designed by Paul at Oceansmotions that drill the bottoms for the return. The flow goes up and so does the detritus to be skimmed from the surface by the overflow. I had to drill low on the sides to do it because my tempered bottom, but it works great!

[AktionJaxsun]

I plan on having the water pumped straight up out my sump. Will the water drain down back into the sump? If so can I prevent this from happening?

[AktionJaxsun]

Okay, I found out through talking with others that draining will be a problem. Anybody had success will check valves. What if I put two in for redundancy? My next question would then be do they reduce your flow rate?

[AktionJaxsun]

bump

[vdKroon]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7426634#post7426634 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dandy7200
I can think of none. There are a few people that use a flow pattern designed by Paul at Oceansmotions that drill the bottoms for the return. The flow goes up and so does the detritus to be skimmed from the surface by the overflow. I had to drill low on the sides to do it because my tempered bottom, but it works great!

How did you deal with back siphoning? Check valves? Or just raised piping outside the tank?

[AktionJaxsun]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7514740#post7514740 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by vdKroon
How did you deal with back siphoning? Check valves? Or just raised piping outside the tank?

From what I gathered by asking other people in other threads is that check valves are a way to do it, but they are unreliable. You could be redundant with them, but you could still run into problems and they just aren't worth the mess and total disaster that would come if they failed to work. I think raised piping would work, but I think there are some issues to consider with that. My plan now is to do a closed loop for all of the main flow within my tank. I am going to keep the distance water has to travel relatively small so I don't lose a lot of GPH out of my pump. I will have to buy a second pump to get water from the sump to my tank, but it will only have to be strong enough to get water back in. This solves my other issue of having to increase the size of my linear overflow. I won't have too with a closed loop. I think the closed loop solves a lot of problems in my opinion. Whether I am going through the bottom of my tank is still undecided. I hope that helped or at least gave you something to consider.