Brett
Looking great can`t wait to see water in it!!! I like the side overflows on mine, im sure you will too. Tagin along come over to my place and we can plan a raid on Kiens tanks one night. Just Kidding

Dude I've practically got a LEASH on Kien now. He didn't tell you I'm his running coach? Raid sounds like a good idea though!

Let me know when your going for a run and I could do the dirty work. I must stop over there one day and have a chat with him its been a while.

When you said two sides viewable I thought we had won a watch, now I see one side is actually an end panel, although this doesn't eliminate the system I have been discussing in the mulltidirectional thread it does make it a little trickier, assuming the back wall is black indicates that you don't plan on spending much time viewing back there and that wall may well have rock against it, correct me if I am wrong.

Just a thought, if you were to swing the tank 90 degrees you would have a true two side view and a better view from your desk, if not then we will deal with the cards we have been dealt, alternatively if you give up the viewing area in the fish room then we can accomplish almost everything.

Typically I start by determining where the overflow is and insisting that surface water moves in that direction, you would be amazed at the number of people that have it all wrong and do not understand why they are having a tough time with their system, their surface water is akin to a cesspool.

In your case you have what I would usually label a peninsula tank, except you blacked out one side, return water from the sump should enter the tank at the visible end at the surface and be fired horizontally down to the overflow end, where you have a Beananimals drain system.
Regardless of whether you go with the barrel roll principle or the reversing principle the surface flow should be fixed as suggested. until you have time to look over the plan it will be hard to determine the best design, depending on your response.

The only other thing that I will offer is to get the best blast for the buck and the best flow available all outlets and drains should enhance each other,additionally, the main object other than removing crap from the tank is to move as much water as possible without internal interference, don't fire outlets into rocks or walls, fire them into voids so that the whole volume of the tank is pulled into the action.

This will be the goal.

Paul

Paul, I'm curious why you suggest specifically a Beananimal overflow and not, say, a Herbie or other?

Paul thanks for the detailed response. To quickly clear a few things up...the room is only 12 feet across and I don't really want to rotate the tank.

The rockwork will be well away from both the front pane and the rear pane. I don't like rock touching the back wall (or even being close to it). Easy access means I can get in to scrape it clean. I'm going to paint both side and rear panes so you are free to put holes wherever you wish there.

The overflow box in the model is only 12" high. I don't imagine I need to make it narrower to incorporate outlets that flank it higher up as that will flow against the returns.

The tidal thing just sounds neat but really I just want my flow to be hidden as well as possible and to be a bit random with one of your units. Random or at least varied as with the tidal thing.

Thanks!

As with any build I have to read between lines, especially when using emails , phone calls usually get quicker results as tone of voice and hesitation can be sensed quickly.

Given the proposed design, the first option that would work would to be simply do the barrel roll system down the length of the tank, looking at the tank from the seating area with the overflow on the right the whole tanks volume would move in a clockwise manner, surface water left to right, lower water right to left, this would be accomplished by outlets coming from the bottom up all outlets would be pushing water to the left , this would be switched from outlet to outlet repeatedly placing large volumes of water at different progressive locations down the length of the tank, in recent years this has been called a gyre, trust me it is the same thing sexed up a little, I still call it a barrel roll.

You would see no plumbing, it would speed up and slow down and as a result there would be an inclination for corals to grow in favor of that direction, however the slow and fast move apparently doesn't have as much directional growing as a fixed closed loop without any speed /switching change.

C/L pump feeds would be accomplished by multiple feeds buried in the rock work, these in turn would point towards where the flow is coming from to enhance flow, multiple drains will give better coverage,reduce velocity to avoid sucking in critters and protect flow reduction in the future because of the excessive feeds, stay away from screens that stop sand from entering the drains, place them where it will not see sand, fine screens will clog.

Ponder this and will await your response.

Paul

wow Brett, this is awesome, you must be stoked.

congrats.

LOL @ the 404 error.

Brett, i think you should change it to 405, to avoid any 'error' causing the build to be incomplete... and up to 405 rather than down to 403, avoiding a downgrade! Haha.

I hope this one comes together for your just the way you'd like man! And again, let me know if I can help out with anything!

Cheers,

Chris

Dude I told you, that was just a one time thing. Thought we agreed that was just to satisfy our curiosities.