Connecting multiple tanks through central header tank?

Riley S · Feb 25, 2014

I'm setting up a dedicated fishroom in a basement room that will have two 500 gallon round tanks plumbed to an adjacent filter room. I have room to hook a rack system up across from the round tanks to house eggs and grow out. Ideally, I'd like to have this plumbed to the filter room as well not only from a maintenance standpoint, but also for water quality. The room has two doors for whatever reason, but they are both in good spots with the basement layout, so I don't really want to block one off to run plumbing. I also don't want to run any pipes along the floor. If I could run all the plumbing overhead along the ceiling, I could easily do it.

Has anyone hooked multiple tanks together using a common header tank as a "junction box?" Basically the filter room would also be on a loop to the header tank continually circulating, and the rack system would feed into the header tank and gravity feed back to the rack system. Plumbing something like that makes sense to me, what I can't figure out is how to make it work and not flood if one pump is turned off for whatever reason. This may be impossible from a physics standpoint, but I thought I'd throw out the idea anyway. I will probably have to run a separate filter, but wanted to first see if anyone has hooked multiple tanks together with all the plumbing on the ceiling?

Here is a crude drawing to show what I'm talking about, the header tank idea is in red:

Drstrangelove · Feb 26, 2014

Sorry, probably would understand this more if I learned design....

I can't follow the flow of the water. Also the top down view is great for seeing how the floor is laid out, but it doesn't say much about the height of anything. Without seeing or understanding heights is hard to tell if there is a flooding potential. I'm also confused how there are arrows going both directions from the "header tank". How does the water know which way it's going?

joe jaskot · Feb 26, 2014

From your explanation and drawing it is hard to tell what you are trying to do. How does the water in the ponds get refilled? How can you have water going in and out of the header tank? How is the water in the rack system filtered? What is the rack pump in? The worst part of your design would be the head pressure. You are going to have to lift the water to the ceiling. This would require a huge pump using lots of electricity. Seems like a poor design choice.

Riley S · Feb 26, 2014

I'm not too good at explaining things. For illistrative purposes, I basically want to hook something like this:

to something like this:

and I want to see if it's possible to hook the two to together using a standard 8' ceiling. The only thing I could come up with is a header tank like this:

which could work, unless one of the pumps were shut off and then it wouldn't without one system flooding and running the other system dry. Lets assume the left side plumbing of the header tank is system 1, and the right side is system 2. The header tank in this instance is nothing more than a junction box.

Is there a better way to do this without risk of flooding if one side turns off? Is doing this at all an impossible thing to do? It may be and that's fine. I may end up having to have the rack system on it's on filtration, but I'm just trying to save on maintainance and also not have to worry about the water quality of that system.

Drstrangelove · Feb 26, 2014

I see. The second diagram and photo shows a lot more of what the issues are.

I'd probably do all my filtration in or around the tubs (as you show) and simply run a t-line of freshly filtered water along the floor over to the base of the rack, then up into the top tier of tanks and then let it over flow to the tanks below. At the bottom, I'd have a collection point and handle a return line to the sump.

It appears that most of the water is in the tubs, is that right?

In theory you could run a line across the ceiling, although that creates extra weight on the ceiling (from the pipes and water) and creates construction expense that isn't really needed to accomplish the task. If you use the ceiling, you have to make sure the weight is properly supported.

One pump could do this I imagine if you used one small line up to the racks and a larger line back to the tubs. You will have a lot of head pumping water up 6-8 feet with a lot of pipe bends. I'm not sure if 2 pumps are a better idea although I have no idea how to size 2 different sized lines with 2 very different head pressures.

I've never run a rack system, so although I have ideas on how to avoid flooding, I'd defer to others who do this because I'm sure there are aspects I would fail to properly consider.

Anyway, it's an interesting question / problem and I'm sure my answer has lots and lots of mistakes, so I'll be looking for what you and others think.

joe jaskot · Feb 26, 2014

First off, if you are hatching fish eggs or raising small fry, you don't want too much current. Additionally, if you are going to be running two pumps, you might as well have two separate filter systems. It will make things much easier (plumbing wise and health wise). If something goes wrong (disease wise) with one central system, you have the chance of losing all your fish. Also, please explain the purpose of the header tank and how you support the weight of it on the ceiling.

Riley S · Feb 26, 2014

The header tank would just be a junction box and wouldn't have to be very big. Something like 3 gallons would be fine, and it could be anchored to the wall near the ceiling. The pipes going to and from wouldn't have to be very large either as the flow rate doesn't have to be insane. The idea of the header tank was to junction the small system to the big system without having to depend on a long run at siphon.

The idea is starting to sound more like this:

I don't know if it's possible to hook two systems together this way, it may very well be physically impossible. That's why I threw the idea out there, to see if it could be done. I may end up having to set the rack system up by itself after all.

Squirtle919 · Feb 26, 2014

Not 100% sure I am understanding correctly but... I would try to use a 55 gallon drum and run the water into this then out from the base using gate valves to control the flow. as for overflowing first idea is a float valve as I am still a bit confused but there a few options to prevent this.

If it was me I would try to build the rack to accommodate a sump under for ease or a barrel on the side, you could even run it off an air pump. All will be much more simple and as its only going to be used for fry and grow outs I cant see a massive requirement to have it linked to the main system without causing headaches. else you pump right from the rack to the sump then allow mixing to occur in there > back to top tier and down to bottom tier, an external pump would work great for this but I dont think its what your after

castro1212 · Feb 27, 2014

So I'll be honest I didn't read anything else beside the op so it may have already been said.

Why use the junction box? Couldn't you just attach the lines from the rack system up to the lines from the ponds going to the filter? That seems much simpler and would not have the need for the junction box

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F1 VET · Feb 27, 2014

A Turbo charger for a fish tank??!..... I like!

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Cheap way to decrease nitrates and keep your fish healthy: http://monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=504763


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Connecting multiple tanks through central header tank?

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