Need help with plumbing for 1000 gallon plywood

[KansasSunfish]

Hi all! I’m a new member but long time reader. So here is my dilemma, I’m building a new plywood tank (12.5 foot long by 4 foot by 3 foot tall) and before I get started i want to have The whole thing planned out in detail. This is not my first plywood tank, but is the biggest one I have built to date. My plan is to build a custom sump to go underneath of the tank. It will be a freshwater system. I plan on having multiple return pumps as well. In my experience, it’s always better to have multiple pumps or heaters or whatever instead of one big one, in case one fails, the others continue to do their job. My problem comes with how do I plumb The overflows, as to minimize the amount of intrusion on the tank, while still using something along the lines of a Herbie overflow, to keep it quiet. Also, it is important to me to have multiple overflows to help the water movement in the tank. My thoughts are on multiple 2 inch bulkheads.....

 

[nzafi]

Is the tank going against the wall? Maybe do external overflow boxes? You can always do a coast to coast overflow also.

 

[KansasSunfish]

Is the tank going against the wall? Maybe do external overflow boxes? You can always do a coast to coast overflow also.

Yes, it will be going against the wall. And I agree, doing the external boxes would minimize the amount in the aquarium. I’ve never done a coast to coast, not sure how well they work or how quiet they are. I’ve messed with stockmans and herbies, my best luck has been with a modified herbie where I use one emergency overflow and one tee-90-drilled cap combo. Would this work if the tee and cap where outside the tank and then 90 was inside? (Bulkhead in between)

 

[nzafi]

I have actually never done a sump with overflows. When I was planning to do that I was trying to do a coast to coast. You can do herbie or beananimal. The concept of coast to coast is to all for surface skimming across the entire tank and is the preferred approach by many that have the ability to do it.

I got away from the sump idea for my 8x4 because I did not want all the extra weight and maintenance for a long tank. Instead I have gone with a HMF and ultima combo. HMF is not conventional, but ultimas are really popular for larger tanks especially their ease of maintenance due to backflushing.

 

[KansasSunfish]

I have actually never done a sump with overflows. When I was planning to do that I was trying to do a coast to coast. You can do herbie or beananimal. The concept of coast to coast is to all for surface skimming across the entire tank and is the preferred approach by many that have the ability to do it.

I got away from the sump idea for my 8x4 because I did not want all the extra weight and maintenance for a long tank. Instead I have gone with a HMF and ultima combo. HMF is not conventional, but ultimas are really popular for larger tanks especially their ease of maintenance due to backflushing.

Forgive me if I sound stupid but you don’t mean hmf as in Hamburg matten filter do you?

 

[nzafi]

Lol, I do actually. The issue with just running an ultima is that it does not allow you to hide stuff like heaters, or in my cause drains for auto drip (tank needs to be up against the wall so can not do drains on the back panel.

I was either going to have overflows for a sump or I could go with corner HMF filters. I chose to do corner HMF filters which will be black against black background. The reason is pretty much:
- Want redundancy against ultima filter
- Prefer closed loop tank as it reduces humidity, water evaporation, and heat loss
- I wanted to minimize monthly cost /watts used. I can get 2,000gph through the hmf with just 30watts versus investing in more pumps.
- I did not want to deal with a huge sump plus filter socks, plus maintaining that sump.
- Based on discussions with swiss tropics I calculated how much poret I need for my bio load versus using the standard calculation which lets me do corner filters smaller than overflow boxes.

In my design the HMF is purely there for redundancy and to hide auto drip drains and heater. The other benefit is that if I ever lose power my heated auto drip will keep the tank temperate, provide some oxygen, and the HMF instead the tank will continue to provide some filtration.