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08/15/2007, 05:48 PM | #1 |
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Need Help Setting Up Multiple tanks with Cascading Water Flow
I am setting up a new frag tank and refugium where the frag tank will sit on a shelf above the fuge. I and I am wondering if anyone can help me design it so that I can pump the water up from my sump (which sits lower than the fuge) and have the water flow from the frag tank, down to the refugium and then back down to the sump.
The trick is that I don't want bubbles from a durso or gravity feed from the frag tank going into the refugium. I am thinking of using a siphon between the frag and fuge tanks and then a simple gravity drain with an external durso from the fuge to the sump as I don't care about bubbles going down to the sump. Both the frag tank and the refugium have two holes for 1" bulkheads drilled about 3" from the top of the tank. One on either end of the backside of the tank. Thanks! |
08/16/2007, 07:18 PM | #2 |
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So, this is kindof what I attempted to describe in the first post. Anyone have some time to spare and look it over?
Warning: I'm neither an artist or a plumber. |
08/16/2007, 07:56 PM | #3 |
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Sorry, its too late for me to think hard about your setup so I don't have any good advice. I was just wondering what program you used to create the diagram? It looks like you spent quite a bit of time thinking it out. Good luck.
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08/16/2007, 08:02 PM | #4 |
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That will work. Maybe add a valve between the Frag tank and Fuge#2, so you can control the flow and bubbles ...
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08/16/2007, 08:02 PM | #5 |
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Why don't you want bubbles in fuge 2? I assume that is the fuge you are talking about since it is the only one that receives water from the frag tank. It seems that bubbles in the sump would be more of an issue since they would be most likely to make it up to the display. Does it have to do with too much oxygen? Why do you have a drain on fuge 2 that looks like it is behind a weir as well as a drain at the water line that both look like they join into the same drain line? Both seem like they should surface skim just fine.
I guess I'm not too tired to join in. |
08/16/2007, 08:11 PM | #6 |
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The surface skimmer pipes are there in case the primary drains stop working for any reason so the tanks can't overflow (in theory). But even so, I'll use a float switch to shut off the return pump if water level rises too high in any of the tanks.
I don't want bubbles in the 2nd fuge because bubbles pop and that creates salt spray which makes a mess of my light, the stand and everything else. I only have about 4-5" of clearance between the light and the water so popping bubbles will get water and salt all over it. I created the pic using Microsoft Visio. I've drawn most of the parts for other drawings and now I have a moderately large library of pieces that I mostly just have to copy and move around so I can put together a drawing like this in about half an hour or a little longer. |
08/16/2007, 08:20 PM | #7 |
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dont do it.. to much salt spray from the exit tubes, thats how i HAD my prop tank set to my fuge.. what a mess
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08/16/2007, 08:30 PM | #8 |
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I gotcha. So the weir will be set slightly higher than the primary drain bulkhead and only used a backup?
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08/17/2007, 07:46 AM | #9 | |
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furc007, the idea is to use a siphon between the prop tank and the 2nd fuge, so there shouldn't be any bubbles at all. I will use the durso on the 2nd fuge down to the sump as the primary drain for that tank which will create a lot of bubbles, but they won't be any problem to manage in the sump.
hoosierpat, exactly. I posted the same question in the Tanks, Equipment & Filtration forum and someone posted this which looks very interesting. If this siphon design works, then I might use it for all three tanks. Quote:
Last edited by ppurcell; 08/17/2007 at 07:53 AM. |
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08/22/2007, 08:55 PM | #10 |
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Any more thoughts, suggestions, observations or advice?
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08/22/2007, 11:27 PM | #11 |
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Yikes.... looks like the cooling system for a nuclear reactor. Don't ask me why I thought that.
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08/26/2007, 07:01 PM | #12 |
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Sooo the self-starting siphon isn't self starting, but it will re-start so I may use it for the drain on the 2nd fuge to the sump. Unfortunately it isn't bubble-free, so it looks like I am back to my original design on drain between the prop tank and the 2nd fuge unless someone can come up with something else clever.
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08/26/2007, 09:09 PM | #13 |
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ADD A PUMP..LOL
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08/27/2007, 07:36 AM | #14 |
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Yeah, that would be the easy way to solve the problem and it will be what I do if I cannot come up with a single pump solution. I'm stuck on the idea of lower power consumption, less heat generation, a little less plumbing to/from the sump, and one less electrical device in the water.
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08/27/2007, 07:42 AM | #15 |
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BTW, if anyone is interested in doing the "nuclear reactor cooling" overflow there is a long thread on it here that YankeeReefer pointed me to. It's cheap, easy and it works.
http://www.3reef.com/forums/i-made/n...low-29396.html |
08/27/2007, 08:55 AM | #16 |
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Speaking on nuclear cooling...and completely off topic here Phil, but I was rebuilding a PC for my nephew last week and his rig is water cooled. As I was doing some research, I came across a guy that built a working ionic cooling system for his CPU. Completely fanless and silent. He basically tore apart an Ionic Breeze and mounted the ionic breezer things to his CPU heatsink...and it actually works.
Amazing...
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08/27/2007, 12:04 PM | #17 |
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I'm not familiar with the innards of an Ionic Breeze, I didn't know that it could be used for cooling.
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