newbie piping questions - what size return - what size overflow?
 

So im going to be buying a 180g in the next week and a half.
I decided to model so I can get a feel of what its going to look like in my place.
Here is what I have so far:

Green is return, red is overflow
http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/o.../aq-side-1.jpg


refugium pluming
http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/o...c80/aq-ref.jpg

a shot of the back
http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/o.../aq-rear-1.jpg

The final product
http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/o...complete-1.jpg


As you can see, I want to get a little baby refugium on display just for shits and giggles.
So my questions are:
What size piping should get returned from pump?
What size piping should T off to the refugium and back into sump?
Is the return and overflow too close together on the refugium?
Is the return and overflow too close together on the main tank?
What size piping should be on the main tank overflows?

Any help is greatly appericated, im new to these boards!

Gave up on that "how much flow through my sump" thread eh? ;)

I can only give you my opinions on your overflow. You'll need to choose your pipe sizes based on the size of your return pump. If your overflow can handle 600 gph you'll need the appropriately sized overflow pipe (as a minimum). Here's a calculator:
http://www.aquariumpros.ca/modules/O...ator/index.php

If you tell us the pump you plan to use, someone can probably give you exact pipe sizes for both.

As an aside: You should consider the Beananimal (or even Herbie) overflow. You won't regret it.

well I dont know which pump to get yet. I wanted a good quality pump with very little noise.
i was looking at either:
http://www.jlaquatics.com/product/tz...+1073.040.html

or

http://www.marineandreef.com/4_MDQX_...p/rlg82507.htm

suggestion on the pump?

thats why my other thread was started so I could figure out which pump to get!

wow that beananimal link is nice
But it means I gota drill another hole in the tank!

check out a Herbie, just needs 2 holes and you'll find quieter than a Durso, Stockman or Hofer.

As for as pipe size, I've got a 1" return and 2x2" drains, can easily handle 2000gph so hindsight could have gone smaller. If you do go a Herbie or Bean, look at Bean's calculator, seems you get a lot of water through a relatively small pipe on a full siphon.

IME
The days of having huge water volumes through a sump are pretty much over. Lots of people are converting over to having less flow in the sump for 3 important reasons.
1 to clean from the skimmer
2 to heat from the heaters
3 less chance of having micro bubbles
lots of people are going with the bigger water movers in the main display IE
Tunze's
Vortech's
closed loop
but for a rule of thumb the measurements are like this as the following
3/4"- 750 gph
1"-1000 gph
1.5"- 1500 gph
2"- 2000 gph
that is a approx measurement. But personally I would stay in the 1.5"-2" for the drainage just so that if anything goes down you don't get a clog from it.

i really liked bean's design and i like the idea of going with water movers in the tank
The tank already has two holes drilled so can i use those two holes to push water into the tank? and drill three more holes up higher to implment bean's design? all with smaller piping?

here is a drawing of what i mean:
The green pipes are the return and the red are the drain
http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/o...holes1-1-1.jpg

http://i389.photobucket.com/albums/o...ewholes2-1.jpg

btw which pump would you guys suggest?

You might want to reconfigure the returns to the the tank, they are somewhat low, if the power fails you will have a flood on your hands, ideally they should return to the opposite end where they would move the surface water to the overflow box but that would alter the aesthetics of the tank. You could reduce the width of the overflow box and bring the returns up higher on the end sides to reduce the flooding issue.

can I not use some sort of check vavle?
http://www.plastomatic.com/ckm.html

those holes are already drilled so thats why i figured ill use them.