New setup. Lots of questions. Flow and filtration

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srt4geezer

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Aug 8, 2015
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Picked up a 300 gallon former reef tank going native river fresh water. What I think is a 60 gallon sump. 2 corner over flows with 2 drilled holes ea. A 1" & 3/4" ea overflow. So 2 1" & 2 3/4" in total. No 3rd hole for a siphon setup.
Single Ehiem 1262. Tank is almost 6 fett above pump (sits on floor/botton of stand with sump). Have both 1" drains going as direct as possible to right side of sump into 4" filter socks. First media is 16lbs of mediahome ultra in raised baskets. Also in same section is a DIY fluid sandbed rolling about 3lbs of pool sand using powerhead. Next section I have waterfalling into 2 (soon to be 3) gallons of K1 with 2 12" airstones overlaped into the 16" wide chamber to create circular flow of the K1. Last is a carbon filter pad. A narrow empty (just water flowing) cjamber then the pump intake chamber. Not using any heaters since native.

Any thoughts?

I am comcerned anout flow. The 1262 is like 900gph, but not with that 6ft elevation. Dont think I'm turning the tank over enough. Not sure how to get more water dropping from the tank though so an added filter could be used to double flow. Is it necessary?

Anyway, any feedback would be great.
 
I guess add bigger pump, and do 2 Durso's. I don't know how much a 1 inch Durso can drain per hour, though. But I'd definitely have more pump output to turn the tank over 8-10 times per hour.
 
I have a single 1" durso in ea corner over flow. The one on the opposite side from the sump filter socks doesnt flow nearly as well as the drain more directly overhead. The single 1262 seems to pump the exact amount as the drains can provide. Maybe with both pumps pushing higher return the dursos will have more to drain? I can try that since the sump has 2 pump bulkheads. I thought it might have been set up as a backup redundancy. I have a second 1262 already plumbed and ready to plug in incase of a failure.
 
How quiet is the Durso? I don't have one, but I'm hearing lately that Durso's can run pretty quiet with a valve on the air inlet. How loud/quiet does yours run?
 
Hello; Under the "any feedback" banner some perspective from the past. I started out running tanks with only air operated (bubbler) type filtration. UGF for a number of years and then UGF with bubbler operated HOB types. The UGF did not remove anything from the tank at all but you could run a tank with them. The bubbler HOB's did trap and remove stuff, but were very low flow.

My first decent HOB had a coffee can sized motor with a long shaft. The motor sat on top of a gallon HOB with the shaft extending down into an impeller. It ran a 125 gallon tank along with some bubblers for a number of years.

I guess what I am trying to get to is that massive filtration is not necessary to make a tank work. You could have a nice running tank with what you have. Much will depend on how the tank is to be stocked. If you plan to have big fish and/or a heavy stocking density, what I think of as a tightrope tank, more filtration could be needed. With ligh stocking density you probably already have more than enough filtration and flow.
 
I would caution against trying a bigger pump to with the intention of providing "more for the duros to drain". I have experienced few 'fails' in life by trying to stuff too much water down a pipe via gravity... If the size of the overflow is limited, and it is unlikely that stacking water on top of them is going to increase your flow... It does appear, on other hand, that you have a sizable amount of biomedia already, and it seems like it all sees enough turnover, within each segment of the treatment train. I know that others might disagree here, but I fee confident that "total tank turnover" is less important that biomedia contact.

Long story short, I say leave it how it is, and you might even find that you are able to push into the realm of overstocked and healthy given your current (or eventual, given the addition of the extra K1) bio-filtration. If you need to, supplement with additional circulation in the main tank to eliminate any dead zones. I feel that these are the true issue with "under-turned" tanks, in addition to the lack of biomedia contact.
 
The durso is way quieter than the open right angle that I started with. Drilled the top to let it breath and some sound comes through that.

I have a Hydor 1500gph pump providing left to right current accross the bottom. Stirs up the bottom "floaties" pretty well.
 
srt4geezer said:
The durso is way quieter than the open right angle that I started with. Drilled the top to let it breath and some sound comes through that.

I have a Hydor 1500gph pump providing left to right current accross the bottom. Stirs up the bottom "floaties" pretty well.
Click to expand...
Not my tank... but would be VERY tempted to leave it alone... that Hydor was exactly what I was thinking in terms of 'making up for lack of turn over'. Again, in conjunction with the turnover provided through your bio media? all set.

Now, for the more important questions...

WHAT SPECIES!?!?!? Where from? When you gettin um? and how?
 
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