12000g flow rate?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
my sump will be pretty massive (around 2000g) and will be mostly cintered glas and a K1 lookalike called Hel-x.
It will be 60cm wide in the smallest place so a high turnover will probeably not be an issue, unless it disturbs the hel-x flow to much but then i will have to mix with the flow patterns if that happens.
I will have 2 pretty massive pond pumps circulating through the bio filter and alott of wavemakers and powerheads in the tank.
I will uppload a picture of how the sump is going to look like when i manage to draw a schematic that is somewhat understandable for someone who isnt in my head =P
 
If I remember correctly the 100,000 gallon Amazon display at the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco has turnover rate of 1x per hour. You should be fine running something similar.

If the viewing window is going to be 2 meters high, you are going to need some thick acrylic (minimum ~2"). Thick acrylic is crazy expensive. Have you priced that out? You could use glass, but I would much rather use acrylic since it is allegedly much stronger.

What are the specs of the pump you are looking at? To get an idea of what it will cost you to run every month, you'll want to know the watts (Amps x Volts) and what you pay per Kilowatt Hour.
A pump with that type of flow is likely going to be 2HP+ and draw well over 2,000 watts. Electricity in my area is expensive so this might not be a good example, but it would cost me about $540/month. If you are closer to the national average in the US ($.11/KWHr), it would be ~$200/month. You would be much better off running two smaller pumps than one large pump. When you get into these high flow rates, two smaller pumps will more often than not be more efficient than one larger pump. The added bonus is that if one fails, the other will keep your system running (designing your systems with redundancies in place will help prevent catastrophe).

I'm not so sure that just because the space is heated that you will not need to supply additional heat to the water, but if you do find that you need to heat it to maintain tropical temps, the cost of running the pump will seem like chump change. Heating large bodies of water requires an enormous amount of energy and gets expensive really quick. Although my 770G is in an unheated room that sometimes gets into the low 50's, it can cost up to $90 month just to heat during the coldest winter months. Your proposed tank is 15 times the size of my tank, so just something to keep in mind. Before buying all of those monsters you listed, I would wait until you know what the heating situation is going to be. If you find that you do need to heat it, I would suggest sticking with non-tropical fish.

Jack Heathcote's tank ended up costing him so much that he had to tear it down and it was only 1/3 the size of the tank you are looking to build. Check out this article:
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=6208

I'm not saying this to be a downer, but just sharing info so that you know what you are getting into. Large tanks can be very expensive to build, but the ongoing costs can also be astronomical.

Looking forward to seeing your build thread.
 
Thx for the concern =), but the viewing panel is going to be 120cm (47 inch) high and 2 or 3 meters wide (78-118 inch) and since i live in sweden where glas is alot cheaper i will use glas so it wont cost me a fortune =).
It will be in a room that will be 26degrees celsius (79 farenheit) so the water will hold atleast that temp or probeably abit higher since there will be pumps and lights that will give of some heat in the water so no heating needed.
as to the pumps i will be using 3 boyu superjet 20000liters/h (5283gallon) that uses 110wats each so will be a total of 330 watts and that is alitlle less then 25 dollars a month with my current electricity rate so thats no biggie even though i will ad acouple of streamers and LOTS of led lights the electricity wont be that high.
I know that those pumps have no head preasure but i will build a sump on the wall of the aquarium so it will have no preasure height at all so that wont be an issue.
I think i have a pretty decent picture of the monthly cost and that wont be that high.
The big thing im always to optimistic at is the building materials, they always go alott higher then i think cause i always need something more or make some changes while im building but thats no rush, i build when i have cash and pause if they run out untill i have more =P.
I will build a 2000-3000 gallon in my basement to house my pacus, giant gourami and rtc so they will have somwhere to be cause they are soon to big for my current tanks.
Just need to finish building my uppstairs bathroom wich will hopefully be done in 2 weeks, then i will build my litlle holding tank in the cellar and i will put up some building pics of that too even thou that aint my main project.
Will be a nice litlle growout tank when i got the big one upp and running thou =)
 
Smart to design the system with as little head as possible. Those pumps push a lot of water considering how little electricity they use and it's good that your electricity rates are reasonable.

In regards to heating, I think you are in for a big surprise (it's something that I overlooked when I was setting up my tank as well, so hopefully you don't take this personally). The air temps might be 26C, but the ground your tank will be resting on is a pretty steady 12 to 13C and it will suck the heat right out of the tank. Did you get a chance to read the article I referenced? Jack was running 6,000 watts of heaters to maintain tropical temps in his 4,000G and it sounds like the design of your tank won't be too much different than his (but your tank will be roughly 3x the size of his). I'm curious why you feel that you won't need to heat your water while he had to? Keeping the air temps in the room at 26C will help, but it won't replace the need for heaters. You will also likely have to run dehumidifiers because humidity will likely be an issue that could lead to serious mold problems.

Again, I'm not trying to rain on your parade. Just trying to share some knowledge so that you go into this project with eyes wide open. Just because there is a heating duct running to the room this tank is in does not mean that it'll be adequate to heat 50 tons of water.
 
Im just glad when someone comes with input, its always a chance that i missed something =).
My tank will be on a well insulated floor with floor heating so the entire rooms heat will come from the floor and there will also be some heat under the aquarium but on a different thermostat so i can turn that down when its getting to warm. =). and i will be running one dehumidifier in every corner of the tank room (4 corners) but they consume verry litle electricity as well and are only active when the humidity is high.
 
lol, yeah, your tank would fall right through that floor. Concrete slab is pretty much the only way to go with the size tank you are building. You might find Numa's thread interesting: http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/my-2500-gallon-concrete-mega-tank-project.438417/

He has radiant floor heating in the room his tank is in, but I don't believe it runs under his tank (not really sure). I think he insulated the tank pretty well, but he still had to heat the water directly and had to run dehumidifiers to keep humidity under control. The dehumidifier unit I looked at when I was considering getting one used around 600 watts, so I wouldn't say they use "little" electricity, but you are right that they would not likely run 24/7. With 12,000G of warm water though, I wouldn't be surprised if they ran as much as 50% of the time.

I've read of some koi keepers using radiant heating to prevent their ponds from freezing over. Here's a link to it in case you are interested: http://www.koiphen.com/forums/showt...39b8159146ce323024071c4&p=1964992#post1964992
 
Since the floor will be the same temperature (or a litlle bit above) air temp and i will have heating under the tank, i wont need to heat. I am sure of it =P
Just lets hope im right.
The dehumidifiers i looked at was at like 50w i think so 200wats total, they work more on the principle of blowing the humid air out then to remove the moist from the air already inside
 
and maybe i forgot to mention it but i will build the entire room where the tank will be in like a bathroom so there will be a moist barrier on all walls, floor and the ceiling
 
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