78 Gallon Cube - How Much Flow

[mark]

Originally Posted by Josh23

The Barracuda is sequence pump?

Barracuda is a Reeflo but seems Reeflo is a division of MDM/Sequence.

[Delphinus]

I'm kind of wondering if 64x turnover might be a tad on the wild side for the livestock you're thinking of. It'd probably be awesome for an SPS tank but if you're thinking of things like open brains, Euphyllia (torch/frogspawn/hammer/etc), Plerogyra (bubble), you could probably make do with a bit less. On the other hand, maybe they'll still do OK but the flipside would be that you could probably save a couple bucks if you went with some smaller pumps.

You may also want to go with BB. If it were me I might try a 1" sand bed but be ready to go BB instead if it kept shifting around. 64x turnover is a lot, I have probably more like 20-30x turnover on my cube tank and if I don't have things pointed "just right" then the sand ends up in a big pile in the corner.

I ran my old ritteri tank (72gal bowfront) running the sump return and skimmer off the same pump. It worked, but I found that that I had to valve back the sump return line in order to drive the pressure up enough in the pipe to drive the skimmer properly. This was because it was a non-recirculating style skimmer. With a recirculating skimmer, you don't need the feed line to be pressurized, just provide a little bit of flow. I can't remember the exact recommendation for optimal skimmer feed flowrate, but I think it's somewhere near 1.5 times the system volume per hour. Anyhow, basically, not very much, so the majority of the flow from the pump would still be available for the sump return or closed loop or whatever you're using it for.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Bubbles really need calm waters or they rip & die.

[Josh23]

Thanks guys...
What size is your cube tank Tony? do you have a link to the tank setup? If your tank is running smoothly I may copy the design. Are there things you would like to change or improve?

What do you think of closed loops, drilling the bottom of the tank. Should I be concerned about the bulkheads leaking?

Ill look at smaller pump for my closed loop maybe in the 2500 gph range.

thanks for the help

Josh

[Delphinus]

No unfortunately I never detailed the tank setup in a thread. I really should have, ooops. It's a 30x30x30. I'm running a Rio HF32 as the sump return (mistake, it's too much flow through the sump and I have a bad microbubble problem - I'm considering downgrading the pump) and the main flow is 2x6100 Tunzes on a multicontroller.

Although I will be pulling the Tunzes and installing them on my 280g when it goes online. Unfortunately they are a little too pricey to have 2 sets onhand. I haven't figured out what to replace them with but it will likely involve a Wavysea waving back and forth. Might be a closed loop or it might be a Seio attached to the Wavysea.

I imagine if the bulkheads had a bead of silicone underneath there's no reason to believe they'd ever leak. But, I have to admit, I'd still be a little nervous about it. But there are tanks out there that do that.

[Josh23]

wow thats very similar to the tank Im setting up 30x30x20. How do you find the space for rockscape. Do you have any pictures? What kind of lighting did you go with? What fish and corals are you keeping?

[Delphinus]

The tank works well for its intended purpose which is more of a dedicated species tank rather than an overall reef. I have a rock pillar ("bommie") in the centre which is directly under the 250W DE halide, and my H. magnifica anemone sits atop that. There is about 6" of sandbed all around the bommie.

It's not the sexiest looking tank there ever was but here's a FTS:


It used to have more corals in there. I have a problem with hitchhiker crabs eating my zoos, so I pulled out all the corals and moved them into my other tank. It used to look more like this:


One day I hope to bring it back to something like that, but since it looks like I have to tear down the rockwork to get at the crabs, I've been putting it off until my other projects are closer to done. Moving the anemone is a bit dicey as it's quite large and .. well.. doesn't like to be moved much. The fish would have to be moved into a different system for at least a few days because when the anemone is annoyed, fish die.

Anyhow there are of course other aquascaping options. I think 30x30 offers a lot of choice. The only thing I've found is that it is a little harder getting the flow conditions right in a cube, at least with the fan shaped outputs of the Tunzes (for every piece of water pushed to one side, there is an equal volume pushed back). I kind of wish I could have more of an oscillation effect, but I guess I'd need a wavebox for that sort of thing.