New Acrylic 150G Tank

[malegolf]

This is 1/2" acrylic, the top brackets are for Sea Swirls. Now I have to make a stand????? I will have two 3/4" Sea Swirls, the drain holes are 1 1/2". Will I have to add anything else for water movement? It's 60X24X24. Thanks


http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/malegolf/album?.dir=/957b

[shaw]

Are some of those seaswirls for a closed loop or just your main circulation?
What are your plans coral wise.

thanks
shawn

[gwrulzmylife]

interesting set up, the stand should be real easy to make though.

I really like the standpipes being away from the wall.

Is this to be a fish onoy, or a reef tank?

[malegolf]

Sea Swirls will be the main circulation, I plan on having a pump for each one. My plan is for a few fish, I have four now, since I have tops on the tank I can now get some of the colorful fish that jump out of the tank. I have a 55g now with twelve corals and some mushrooms. I'm planning on around 200lbs of rock for this tank and three to four inches of sand????????????

[justgettinstarted]

if you want to increase circulation i would run the sea swirls on a closed loop and just drill the back of the tank... its really east to do.

Then you wont have so much water racing through your sump.. so no microbubble problem... also fewer pumps=less heat which means less need for a chiller... take it from someone that has 4 pumps on their tank doing 4,500 gph... i wish my setup allowed for an ampmaster 3000 or a little bigger and just 1 pump for the return... but thats my suggestion

[malegolf]

I'm not sure what you mean about closed loop???? If I have two pumps and the sea swirls are on each one and the water drains into the sump through the two drains isn't that closed loop???????? Why do I need to drill the back of the tank, the sea swirls will mount on the top?

[malegolf]

3/4" sea swirls only need 850GPH, that's 1700GPH for two. Is the Ampmaster 3000 to big???????

[justgettinstarted]

closed loop basically sucks the water directly out of the tank.. into the pump and back out into the tank... there is no air contact so no chance for microbubbles...

You can move large volumes of water much simpler this way...

in my tank i have a 1600 gph of circulation 1200 through the closed loop and 400 through the sump. I only have a 30g sump.. if i was putting 1600 gph through that i would have major microbubble problems...

you drill the back so that the water gets sucked out there and then can return up over the back wall into your sea swirls... search for pics of it if you still are unclear on what it is

[justgettinstarted]

see... the other benifit of a closed loop is if the power goes out since it is a closed system the water cant siphon out... so you can put a spraybar behind the rockwork and not worry about check valves or any of that because the water cant go anywhere!

[justgettinstarted]

you could put in 2 more nonmoving returns if you wanted to... that would cut down on the water volume... the benifit of an ampmaster is they are whisper quiet and low on the electric consumption... and dont add nearly any heat to the water.

[malegolf]

Does Ampmaster make a smaller pump that would work, I'm not to sure about drilling holes in the tank??? There are no other holes other than for the sea swirls.....