Long "River" tank idea

[epond83]

There are inline heatrs you can get hydor i believe

 

[Valous]

sounds like a good plan. but the 15ft glass is going to cost an arm and leg if you are able to get it. same with acrylic. but if you can I am so wanting to see this thing built.

 

[chrisfraser05]

If you are using T5 HO (high output) 3wpg is a lot, wpg rule doesn't work well with anything else beside T12 lighting.

I would maybe get one or a few and pl;ay with how you do the gradient, with good reflectors the can put out a lot of light.

Also depending on how much surrface aggition there is and method of diffusing CO2 you should be able to grow plants the whole lengh. I'm sure it will be lower at the end but less demanding plants can go there. I don't think assuming it will be gone by that point is right.

I was looking at the equivilent of the WPG rule, Just meaning I would lower the intensity as I moved along the tank.
I agree with you that not all the CO2 will be gone by the end however after moving through the heavily planted areas and maybe a few areas with high surface agitation and possible airstones I was meaning I would need less demanding stuff there as you say.

There are inline heatrs you can get hydor i believe

Cheers, I will look into that

sounds like a good plan. but the 15ft glass is going to cost an arm and leg if you are able to get it. same with acrylic. but if you can I am so wanting to see this thing built.

I know Depending just how much it would cost depends wether it would be on one or two pieces but one would be preffered

 

[Richies^Ghost]

15 feet leaves a lot of room for dead spots - it would be better to spread the inlets and outlets around a bit more, rather than having them at opposites ends.

 

[chrisfraser05]

15 feet leaves a lot of room for dead spots - it would be better to spread the inlets and outlets around a bit more, rather than having them at opposites ends.

I have been thinking that myself. Is a big concern, defo needs alot of thought.

I was planning using alot of rock formations raising and lowering etc along the length to try and get areas where there will be a fast flow then split the flow around objects like rocks.

I was checking and found that the tank would be 1000lt (approx) with a flow (up to) 4000lt an hour, this means the water will travel on average 1ft a min through the tank... Not fast enough for my plans looking at it
Maybe will have to be a couple of larger pumps to get it flowing quicker and as you say maybe have more inlets and outlets.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm lol

 

[chrisfraser05]

Maybe two of these and use the sump for filteration afterall!

http://www.arkpetsonline.co.uk/newjet-4500-50w-pump-4500-lph-p-1208.html

 

[chrisfraser05]

whoops, meant to edit not quote my last!
http://www.arkpetsonline.co.uk/newjet-4500-50w-pump-4500-lph-p-1208.html

 

[epond83]

yeah you could have extra outputs along the back with 90* elbos pointing with the flow to keep things moving along.

 

[kallmond]

you could also use powerheads in the middle, although that could create odd eddies at the end of the tank.

If you're going to have a joint in the middle of the tank, have you thought about making it a 90 degree bend in the river? That would give you an easier way to "narrow" the tank and create a faster, deeper channel for one of the segments, and a wider slower channel for the other, plus some interesting eddies/current options in the bend.

 

[tscharf]

i saw that there was a concern for dead spots and that there is a maximum hose length on the fiters, what if you just split the differednce with the two filters, put one filter cycling the bottomg 7.5ft of tank and another cycling the top 7.5 feet. this could also control the number of dead spots