6' 125 gallon river manifold tank

[Sadrobots]

Hey friends, I recently came into another 125 gallon tank and I have it stuck in my head now that i want to do a high flow-rate river tank. it will be kept in my garage which makes temperature management easier for me, and i really want to achieve a high rate of flow. has anyone built a manifold for this size tank? i'm trying to decide what kind of pumps i want to use for the flow. the tank will be filtered with a sump as well so i will have the output creating flow too. thanks!

 

[M1A1]

Have not done this myself but have thought about it a bit so take it for what it's worth (nothing! ) but I think you have three options: internal manifold, external manifold, or internal gyre.

• The external manifold is probably what you're thinking of with a bulkhead on each end of the tank plumbed together via a pump or just plumbed together with the pump inside the tank on one of the bulkheads.
• The internal manifold is basically the same thing but the pipe goes underneath the substrate inside the tank so no bulkheads, no holes in the bottom of the tank, but you give up some tank space with the pipe.
• The internal gyre doesn't involve any plumbing at all but does cost you some tank space as you have to put a divider across most of the length of the tank either horizontally, parallel with the bottom, or vertically, parallel with the back. A 2 gap is enough to move some serious water and you can fit as many pumps as you want in the gap or pointing into the gap.

Note with the internal gyre that I'm not referring to the maxspect gyre pump but just a design called a gyre where the water all moves in the same direction like a river. Kinda of a pain to research these days with the pump named the same thing but you can also look for 'laminar flow tank' and there are quite a few examples in both freshwater and saltwater.

 

[Backfromthedead]

This is a tank i built a few years back with sort of the same idea youre talkin i think. 200g 72x32x22 with 2x 1.5" drains on one end and 2x 1" returns with jebao dcp-10000 pumps feeding each. I called it a "dual-manifold river" design.




I liked how the design worked, but was never really satisfied with the drain strainers. Nevertheless i used it for a couple years for a freshwater community and short lived fowlr setup. I tore it down with plans to rebuild with better bracing and drain design, but the panels are still just laying in my glass pile for now lol.

If i had it to do over, i would use a coast to coast overflow spanning the length of the drain manifold with at least 3x 1.5" main drains and 2x 1.5" emergency drains. On low power there were a couple dead spots at the bottom on the drain end. But on 80% power--~3000gph total, there was no way any gunk could accumulate anywhere in the tank(except around the strainers), and at 100% power all of my sand would eventually make its way to the drain end lol.