Surge device, closed loop or bigger powerheads????????

[chwkreefer]

I have a 150 gallon tank (60" x 24" x 24"). I have mostly sps but I'm not happy with the flow in the tank. My return is a Mag18 and I have a number of powerheads, but there isn't enough flow, turbulence etc.

I'm looking for recommendations to improve flow while keeping costs down. Which would you recommend?

1) Surge device (easy diy project, cheap, noisy, bubbles)
2) Closed loop (more expensive to get a decent pump)
3) Some Seio powerheads (price is good, more powerheads)

If anyone has some experiences for the pros/cons that they could share I would appreciate it. To be honest, at present I'm thinking of getting a couple of Seio 1100's or possibly the 1500's, but I want to think this through first. Your thoughts are appreciated.

Bill

[Tangman]

Power heads are the easy fast answer, but are unsightly IMO. I use a closed loop DIY system and used saturn3 sprinkler heads ( from Snailman onRC) looks and works great ,and was easy and cheap to build

[chwkreefer]

Power heads are the easy fast answer, but are unsightly IMO. I use a closed loop DIY system and used saturn3 sprinkler heads ( from Snailman onRC) looks and works great ,and was easy and cheap to build

What sized pump and pvc did you use?

[Rikko]

I love my surge device, but the bubbles *are* present and short of a few complicated tricks (there are a couple of solutions on RC now, I see), you won't get rid of them. With clever powerhead placement, however, you can make the surge actually form a wave head that sweeps across the tank in a pattern that sends the bubbles harmlessly to a side. Once the full strength of the surge overcomes the powerhead, the bubbles are gone and it's just motion flowing around the tank. I think it's probably the most natural water motion I've ever seen.

[Tangman]

I used one inch PVC and used a Quiet one 6000 , used 4 sprinkler heads and have 1 foot of head ,sprinklers sweep slowly, have them set for 45* sweep ,takes about 1 minute for one sweep

[chwkreefer]

I love my surge device, but the bubbles *are* present and short of a few complicated tricks (there are a couple of solutions on RC now, I see), you won't get rid of them. With clever powerhead placement, however, you can make the surge actually form a wave head that sweeps across the tank in a pattern that sends the bubbles harmlessly to a side. Once the full strength of the surge overcomes the powerhead, the bubbles are gone and it's just motion flowing around the tank. I think it's probably the most natural water motion I've ever seen.

Do you have any links for the instructions you worked off? also any pics of your setup?

[Skimmerking]

I can never understand the flow that people are putting thur their tanks, I have been in the ocean near SPS and have never felt the flow that some people are throwing at them either. ITs funny as heck...


Mike

P.S if ya wanna try some thing hook up a mag 24 on the tank at the top of the over flow and plumb around the tank and then loose the powerheads there you will have enough of the flow in the tank......

[StirCrazy]

P.S if ya wanna try some thing hook up a mag 24 on the tank at the top of the over flow and plumb around the tank and then loose the powerheads there you will have enough of the flow in the tank......

A mag 24 will not even come close to reproducing the natural level of flow in a 150 gal tank. If you have been swimming in a reef area there is a heck of a current, one that moves 1000's of gallons a second. we don't even come close to the flow nature has in our tanks. but there is a difference, depending how you set up that flow it could be to concentrated and I think that is what you are getting confused with, in nature it is a huge dispersed flow so it feels gentle, but if you use power heads you have a pinpoint flow that is hard in one spot and none in the others. I know I have been carried back and forth about 25 feet in a couple seconds by the currents on a reef so that not a low flow.

Steve

[chwkreefer]

P.S if ya wanna try some thing hook up a mag 24 on the tank at the top of the over flow and plumb around the tank and then loose the powerheads there you will have enough of the flow in the tank......

A mag 24 will not even come close to reproducing the natural level of flow in a 150 gal tank. If you have been swimming in a reef area there is a heck of a current, one that moves 1000's of gallons a second. we don't even come close to the flow nature has in our tanks. but there is a difference, depending how you set up that flow it could be to concentrated and I think that is what you are getting confused with, in nature it is a huge dispersed flow so it feels gentle, but if you use power heads you have a pinpoint flow that is hard in one spot and none in the others. I know I have been carried back and forth about 25 feet in a couple seconds by the currents on a reef so that not a low flow.

Steve

Nice post Steve, I was just waiting for you to chime in. Adaboy!!

Hey Steve, are you using those Seio PH's. What's your opinion of them?

[Skimmerking]

[quote=NaCL H20 REEFER]
P.S if ya wanna try some thing hook up a mag 24 on the tank at the top of the over flow and plumb around the tank and then loose the powerheads there you will have enough of the flow in the tank......

A mag 24 will not even come close to reproducing the natural level of flow in a 150 gal tank. If you have been swimming in a reef area there is a heck of a current, one that moves 1000's of gallons a second. we don't even come close to the flow nature has in our tanks. but there is a difference, depending how you set up that flow it could be to concentrated and I think that is what you are getting confused with, in nature it is a huge dispersed flow so it feels gentle, but if you use power heads you have a pinpoint flow that is hard in one spot and none in the others. I know I have been carried back and forth about 25 feet in a couple seconds by the currents on a reef so that not a low flow.

Steve

Nice post Steve, I was just waiting for you to chime in. Adaboy!!

What is that suppose to mean, i was giving a opinion on something. CHWKREEFER........


Steve to your post , Thanks for clearing that up i was making a observation on my thoughts and opinion that i have observed being on many different coral reefs when on duty over seas.


OH i guess that an opinion is no good here. So i take that only 2-3 people here know what they are talkin about. I have been all over reef across the world , I was merely stating I didnt feel a huge current in the reefs might be a hugh flow flow,\

[chwkreefer]

[quote="chwkreefer"][quote="StirCrazy"][quote=NaCL H20 REEFER]

What is that suppose to mean, i was giving a opinion on something. CHWKREEFER........


OH i guess that an opinion is no good here. So i take that only 2-3 people here know what they are talkin about. I have been all over reef across the world , I was merely stating I didnt feel a huge current in the reefs might be a hugh flow flow,\

To quote your initial post "I can never understand the flow that people are putting thur their tanks, I have been in the ocean near SPS and have never felt the flow that some people are throwing at them either. ITs funny as heck... "

I think your inital post had a little sarcasm, now you got a little back I guess, don't read too much into okay? Your opinion is as valid as anyone else's. :biggrin:

[Skimmerking]

No i was stating that it's funny How it that to have a smart ass affect on the post. I was asking about the post that you put in there, I was waiting for you to chime in Steve Adaboy. To me that sounded like sarcasm to me, that is why i posted..


mike

any way i'm not trying to start waves here, I was making a post if it came out sarcasm ,my apoliogizes if it sounded like a smart ass.

mike

[chwkreefer]

No i was stating that it's funny How it that to have a smart ass affect on the post. I was asking about the post that you put in there, I was waiting for you to chime in Steve Adaboy. To me that sounded like sarcasm to me, that is why i posted..


mike

any way i'm not trying to start waves here, I was making a post if it came out sarcasm ,my apoliogizes if it sounded like a smart ass.

mike

Likewise, my point wasn't to offend you. So let's just put those comments behind us.

[Skimmerking]

Already done ,

thanks

P.S I wish tha all the posts can be sorted out like these ones ..


mike :biggrin:

[Invigor]

i'm thinking of getting a tunze sometime or another for some nice flow :)

[StirCrazy]

Hey Steve, are you using those Seio PH's. What's your opinion of them?

yup, I am using them in addition to my Tunze I like them so far.

Mike, how did you change your name and keep your post count :mrgreen: never realized it was you until I read your Sig hehe. anyways I was not trying to discount what you said as I have been snorkeling on a few reefs myself but I think you were talking about power head blast, was I wrong? take my tank I am up to a 90X turnover rate in the tank. no matter where you put your hand you feel a gentle current not a hard flow anywhere well unless you put you hand right in front of the tunze. So it is possible to have high flow with out the blast.

One reason I also like the higher flows is I find the corals actually grow faster and more robust. I have also noticed a correlation to bleaching and flow, I am finding that the higher flow I have through the tank the less chance there is of a coral bleaching when I add it to the tank. I believer flow is often overlooked or the wrong type of flow is added. be for when I had my maxi jets I had to place them in such a manor that they wouldn't be pointing at anything as they would rip the flesh off my corals. at that time I had a flow rate of about 10 to 15X. with the new set up it is the first time I have not had to worry about where I put corals as although I have increased the flow rate by leaps and bounds it has been dispersed through out the tank and the type of flow generator (power heads) are that which make a wide flow not a blast. this constant high flow in my opinion makes it easier for corals to get rid of nasties that they need to get rid of and also makes a higher concentration of bacteria/nutrients/ect that they need available to them by the fact that more new water/min is made available to the coral and the flow is such that it keeps particulate matter suspended for them.

Steve

[muck]

Mike, how did you change your name and keep your post count :mrgreen: never realized it was you until I read your Sig hehe.
The spelling didn't give it away...? :razz:

[Rikko]

I love my surge device, but the bubbles *are* present and short of a few complicated tricks (there are a couple of solutions on RC now, I see), you won't get rid of them. With clever powerhead placement, however, you can make the surge actually form a wave head that sweeps across the tank in a pattern that sends the bubbles harmlessly to a side. Once the full strength of the surge overcomes the powerhead, the bubbles are gone and it's just motion flowing around the tank. I think it's probably the most natural water motion I've ever seen.

Do you have any links for the instructions you worked off? also any pics of your setup?

Try RC for a 'Borneman Flush Device'. It's basically a toilet flapper with a float attached. Simple, simple, simple. I took a 10 gal aquarium and threw it on top of my canopy. I siliconed in a baffle near one side so that part was always full (my mini-sump - too bad the new heater I got doesn't fit properly :/) and drilled the bottom of the larger area. The toilet flapper is a standard PVC fitting and screwed onto the bulkhead fitting on the hole. Due to the minimum height of the toilet flapper part, the water level can't empty below about 4" of water. Hey! Instant fuge! So the water level rises to the very top of the tank before the float on the flapper rises enough to open the flap, and it surges down to 4" again.
Here's a very old photo a few days after it started working. No new photos are possible so long as my camera decides it requires an entire set of batteries to take 3 photos.

http://rikko.no-ip.org/aquaria/surge.jpg

[Delphinus]

Rikko, tell us a bit about how you have the outlet of the surge enter your tank. Does the pipe sit submerged, or above the surface, or midway, etc. Also how many bubbles do you get from it?

I briefly toyed with Borneman surges myself a couple years back but I didn't quite get the effect I was hoping for. I'd love to get more height on the reservoir and try again, but more height means more air in the discharge tube so I see a bit of a catch-22.

PS. Get a buddy to come over and snap some pictures! :razz:

[Rikko]

Well, as far as physical connections, I've got the flapper welded onto the bulkhead via a single coupler - let's say there are maybe 3" of space in there with perhaps a 1.5" inside diameter. Then it runs down about 6", hits an elbow, travels another 12" to the corner (I should have planned the bloody thing to account for the lighting! Now I have to bypass around it!), and down the final 6" or so. The outlet itself is a 90 degree elbow so it's parallel to the water surface but submerged at all times. Another guy on RC I was talking to was having huge problems with the flapper closing but it ended up being caused by his outlet being above the surface.

Here's a shot from a little farther back about a week into the cycle...
http://rikko.no-ip.org/aquaria/display.jpg

Bubbles? There are a lot, but I've stopped caring about them so much now that I found a good position for the powerhead to deflect them off the corals. Once the surge has begun no new air siphons in, so it becomes a "clean" surge after that.
If bubbles are your enemy, there are 2 options.. Solenoid (the clicky would annoy me more in the night than the gush of bubbly water, somehow), or a vacuum design. I'm subscribed to an RC thread somewhere where a guy actually built a chamber within his surge chamber to control the air and the end result is no bubbles! I've read it a couple times and never been in a temper to fully understand it, but I'll dig up the link after/at work today.

One thing with the Borneman, however, is that you NEED to guarantee a minimum rise of water level in the surge tank. If it's too slow you *will* end up with a flapper slightly starting to open, then water draining and the whole contraption closing down again.. Water level rises a bit again.. Flapper lifts slightly.. Yeah.

[Delphinus]

I was able to reduce the bubbles a bit by having an exit hole in the discharge tube so that the air had somewhere to go (other than into the tank) as this slug of water came sloshing down the pipe. It never really eliminated them, though, and there was always bubbles throughout the entire surge.

I actually didn't mind them so much in the tank but the salt spray that they caused was getting everywhere. Although in the end it wasn't the reason I stopped using the surge device. But if there's a way to make that part of it better, I'm all for it, nonetheless. If you wouldn't mind looking up that RC thread, I'd love to see it. Thanks.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Who said power heads are unsightly was bang on. I looked at Jacks return loop on his older tank (60 gallon) I think and it was an awesome set up. I tried plumbing a couple of Mag3's into some PVC and having it branch out behind the LR in various areas when it was all said and done it still looked cumbersome and unsightly. I was also thinking of putting a float switch on a pump to return the water from the sump but that was kind of kiboshed through domestic issues. I thought a 50 gallon sump with a small holding area and the float switch to push most of the water back to the main tank then switch off when the water level got to say 3 inches deep in the sump have that on a timer so during the day I had lots of movement then at night just have a smaller pump running for less surge(less noise).

I think what we really want rather than tons of water swirling around is that back and forth surge, on a real reef there isn't all these little currents always but there is always the motion of the ocean :mrgreen: that surge is what moves nutrients to the corals and moves debris away. I think that toilet plunger idea is an excellent one, I wonder what size of refugium/holding tank you'd need to get the full effect of the surge.

To reduce bubbles what about putting in a trap, lower than the surface of the water, then have the tubes come back up and into the tank, that may reduce some of the bubbles... or maybe I'm way off track.

Doug

[Willow]

I think what we really want rather than tons of water swirling around is that back and forth surge, on a real reef there isn't all these little currents always but there is always the motion of the ocean :mrgreen: that surge is what moves nutrients to the corals and moves debris away.

Doug

you might want to check this out.

http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=TZ2311

[BCOrchidGuy]

Nice but seeing as I pay $500 a month in child support I figure my spending money is about $200 a month and that's for groceries and gas too so I figure it would take me 11 years to save up for that. It is cool though, gotta love Tunze.

Doug

[Rikko]

There it is...
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=507732

I actually have an exit hole on mine and can't really tell if it works anymore. When I used the same hole on a Carlson surge (same connections to the surge atop), the hole actually worked as a Venturi and gave a 100% bubbling surge. With the Borneman, it shoots water out. Go figure?

[Delphinus]

Ohhhhh he capped the standpipe and made the safety overflow completely independent of the discharge tube. Brilliant. :exclaim: :idea: Yes, I see how that could work!

Oooh ooohh ohhhhh I have to set my Borneman surge up again. Glad I never throw anything out!!!!!!

[Rikko]

I kept thinking he'd done more than that.. I tried capping my standpipe (I just stuck my hand over it) and the resulting pressure was simply too great to let the flapper close.. It would just BANG BANG BANG up and down and never be able to suck down. It could also be the amount of PVC I have running from the surge to display.. Maybe a P-trap if space weren't at such a premium.. Sigh.

Ok, it's decided. I'm just going to set up a desktop nano cube and do all my evil experiments on that.

[Delphinus]

Did you use the check valve on the discharge tube? I haven't finished reading the thread yet but the gyst I'm getting is that this is integral to the flapper closing properly. A P trap may work as well except an open P trap would defeat the purpose of capping the overflow.

Although I think the problem would be different from what you're describing. :confused:

Ah, time to read it again and think it through one more time. :lol: