Sploosh!!!
Possibly. My tank is 4', the surge does make it to the other side, but in a greatly diminished capacity. Of course, what is happening in my tank is I already have two powerheads at each side, aiming at each other ... so in the center of the tank where the currents meet there is this area of turbulence. Compounding this is the sump returns are also in the center. So the surge basically hits this convergence and then is diverted all over the place. That said, some does make it through and over to the other side though. I haven't tried the surge without the powerheads, to see how much it would then race across to the other side, but there's not a lot of doubt in my mind that it would make it no problem.
Of course, you can always make your surge stronger by raising your surge bucket. I have mine as high as I can get it without cutting a hole in my ceiling :D . Of course this extra strengh of the surge would be at the cost of losing a flooded discharge tube, so it becomes a judgment call.
Bubbles will cause salt spray. I haven't noticed any extra salt creep on my lights yet (hopefully they're high enough off the water, but who knows). To be fair it has only been running a couple of days. A week from now will be the next real test.
A closed loop was another option I considered. They're great for creating a lot of current, but I opted for this because I hoped it might be simpler, and cheaper (I just T-ed off my sump return so no extra powerheads or pumps) plus you get an actual "surge" more like a wave rather than a "constantly on" kind of current. (I'm really trying to go for a more "whoosh -- whoosh" kind of effect. :D
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