Building a 1500 Gallon plywood & glass tank

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
You seem to think that after 35 years of keeping fish that I've never come across any of these "mistakes" you refer to. What works for you may not work for someone else. It doesn't mean your idea isn't good and doesn't work nor does it mean mine doesn't either. Instead of hijacking the thread to combat me, just offer your suggestion and let him decide for himself. That's all I was doing.

The whole topic of the intake came up because what he was using couldn't handle the flow from his pump.
 
Alright so here is what I did.. Put the drain back to it's original height and on the intake screens I took out every other bar in the screen which in turn more than tripled my openings from 1/8" x3" to 7/16" x 3".

Put it all back up and again it couldn't handle the flow.

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So, I cut the drain height down an inch and I am now refilling the tank (Had to drain a foot to adjust the drain height) and will see how that goes in about an hour.
 
I was going to agree that it needed to be lower then I remembered that the PVC overflows that go over the wall of the tank aren't. I don't think it's height, but rather restriction and maybe the plumbing design. You probably need a way of evacuating the air from the upper 180. There's probably a big air bubble sitting there causing the flow to cavitate.

I'd take the grates off and try it before lowering the pipe any more.
 
I think the height is perfect on the one I lowered, problem is not the sump runs dry before I can get a good gage on the flow..

Sigh.. I might have to cut out the scrubbie area and pond armor the exposed wood in order to give the pump the extra water to play with.

The current final area in the sump holds 96 gallon, The scrubbie area holds another 66 gallons and if I remove that middle wall I would have to include the first chamber as well which adds another 33 gallons.

Doesn't look like I have a choice actually since I cannot expand the sump at all..

I need to think this over..
 
Something you can do to throttle down the pump WITHOUT creating back pressure is to add a T with a ball valve inline on the return. Divert the flow back to the sump or use it to power another filter. You can also use it to spray your scrubbies to freshen them up a bit.

Use a T and ball valve the same size as your return line from your pump. Put the top of the T so the water flows straight through to the tank and the ball valve on the leg of the T pointing off the left side at your sump.

Any amount of open on the ball valve throttles down the flow to the tank by diverting it rather than what most people do restrict the flow of the pump. No pump damage and full control of flow to the tank.
 
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