turnning pumps off and on

[steve fedyk]

How hard is it on a reeflow pump to turn it off and on. say every six hour.

I been thinking of how to creat tiedoll flow from one side of the tank to the other and back again. Pull water from one side and pump it over to the other side. then the pump turns off and the other pump starts in the oposite direction.

[Skimmerking]

why not just have a dump system going and its always going

[dstasiuk]

I have a Dart running my closed loop. It only cycles once a day (on in morning, off at night), but has done that for 4 years without the slightest complaint...

[lastlight]

I know you can buy some sort of electrically controlled valves. Maybe they are actuated I'm not sure. They are pretty spendy for a quality one but maybe a valve that alternates between one return line and another is the answer. Keep the pump on?

[Delphinus]

I looked into this myself a few years ago or particularly using a MOV or two to switch direction every few hours or minutes but the pump stays on. Then basically the Ocean Motions came out with the same idea although I don't know if the speed is easily controlled.

Switching pumps would work also except you need two. On and off on a closed loop is not so bad in and of itself if you're looking at a few hours per cycle but I would think it's still harder on the pump long term than just leaving it on.

You're basically talking about doing a gyre flow, it's a good idea in principle and there seem to be a few ways to achieve a good result. Coordinated powerheads on a controllable wavemaker can work towards this as well.

[lastlight]

If you wanna get super fancy what about a fancy pair of red dragon's with vfd? Have one ramp to basically nothing while the other ramps to 100%? Have them opposite each other.

Turning on and off a pump is the cheaper option even IF you fry your pump lol!

[steve fedyk]

the red drogon pumps sounds like a good idea, because at night I can slow down the flow for the fish to sleep.

[mark]

RC thread (http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1750674) for mod'ing pumps for variable flow, but wouldn't worry about slowing the flow for sleep time.