Water Pump Head Loss?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
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CatfishLuver

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 16, 2009
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The Land where Fish Rule!
I am a little bit confused about how big of a pump I need for my sump. I would like the end flow rate of the pump to be around 600 - 700 gph, but that is after one 90 degree elbow to turn over the sump wall, one 90 degree to go straight up along the back of the tank, and two 90's to go over the tank and to back down to where the out put would be. The tank and stand itself is 4 ft. So if I haven't lost you so far, it needs to go up 4 feet and I dont need it to go right or left, only back and forth to get from the sump to the tank. And one other question: for the media containers I am using the sterilite clear drawers, how big should the holes in the bottom of each drawer be to drip to the next drawer (just like a drip tray, but there is one on each level)?

EDIT* In total there are six 8.5 by 11 in drawers that are each around 3 inches tall
 
When I had the same drawer setup u have I had 1/4" holes but I had over 1500gph of flow. I tested several different sizes to find the best for mine. As for the pump get a pump capable of maybe 1000gph than put a ball valve on the output of the pump to regulate the flow.
 
Thanks for the reply. Could you tell me how many rows and columns of holes you had in each drawer? If your goal gph was about double mine do you think it would be good to use 1/8 holes for my setup? Also what size of tank were you running this on? Thanks sooo much!
 
Ya it should work. Trial and error sometimes is the best. That way you can get real world data to refine your design. You want water to drop out just as fast as it is put in otherwise it will overflow. And it was on a 330gal pond. What are you putting in the drawers? I used scrubbies.
 
Mostly likely pot scrubbies for the most of it, but a filter floss prefilter at the top and maybe some ehiem bio filter in submersed drawers since it would probably be more effictive than pot scrubbies since under water in that portion. It will be going on a 135 gal which has a Emporer 400 and an Ehiem 22117 already on it. The wet dry would double the turnover rate for my goal of 10x tank turn over. Do you guys think that is overkill? The tank is a heavily stocked African Cichlid tank so lots of waste.
 
Nope. That should be about right for turn over. When I redid my pond I went with about 11x a hour and that's a 1000gal pond
 
Have a look at the sticky about sizing a pump to your tank. About all the plumbing confusion, all you really need is the 4' vertical rise. The 90's and short horizontals don't really count for anything (contrary to popular belief).
 
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