How much flow is too much??

[ReefFreaks]

I have a Mag 18 laying around. At 4' of head it will give me 1300 GPH. It will be returning via one line with three outputs. My new frag system is about 80 gallons. (50 tank, 30 sump) Is this too much?

[Aadler]

There really isn't 'too much' as long as you either arn't making sandstorms or blowing corals over.

But for a 50g tank 1300 gph is only a 26x turnover, for example I have 46x turn over in my 40g DT tank (appx 1850gph). If you are fragging out SPS I would add more pumps up to 40x turnover per hour, or in your case, shoot for around 2000gph total water movement. (Try to do this with (2) 300-400gph Koralia's as they will move wide areas of water and create less dead space.

Hope that helps,

Mike

[Aadler]

The only thing to note that I forgot is that you do not want direct flow aimed at any coral, so always try to deflect flow off rocks or the side of the tank.

mike

[ReefFreaks]

Aadler,

I am going with a bare bottom, so blowing sand won't be an issue. I have three returns with Loc Line across the back of a 4' tank. They are at the 1,2,3 Ft. marks. I can aim these at the front wall of the tank and down. That should eliminate any direct blowing.

[Thinslis]

This is for a closed loop? You wouldn't want that much flow going through your sump.

You only want about 5-10x going through the sump, then the rest coming from either closed loop or other forms of power heads ect.

[USAquatics]

This would all be from the sump. I have one 1" drain line. It flows over the inside box, then out via a 1" drain, into a sump through filter sock, then overflows into a refugium, and lastly to the reurn pump. It sound like I need to scale back the pump size. I haven't plugged it in yet, I am waiting for it to fill w/R/O. My 20 GPD has been running non stop for four days now. TDS only 7 PPM. Yea!!

[Thinslis]

Unless you have like a 100g sump, your going to have issues with that much flow through the baffles at leat I would think anyways. You can try it and see but I would scale back to only 5-10x volume though your sump / fuge so your filters have a chance to work. The more contact the water has with the filters the more stuff is extracted per pass.

I have 2 1" drain lines and 1.5" return on my Mag 9.5 return pump.

[sabalough]

you will have a hard time geting 1300 gph down a 1" drain.
I belive 1" will only flow 600-700 gph max.

however you can add a valve on the output and adjust it to what ever flow your drain can handle.