Taylor810
Community Member
Hey everyone. I am getting ready to plumb four lowboys into a single sump and am looking for advice since I've never tried to plumb this many tanks together before.
Some background, I am self-employed. Something I've always tried to do is find ways to develop my hobbies into legitimate side businesses to be able to take advantage of tax write offs. I started an LLC this year to sell coral and have re-routed my other 1099 gigs through this LLC. I started the coral selling side of the LLC with a single 50-gallon lowboy and after just three months, I am profitable. So, naturally, I want to expand the business.
I am in the process of building out a coral "farm" in my garage. In reality, it will probably be 40% farm, 60% reselling wholesale orders. I live in Texas, so it's a pretty big undertaking to run a fish business out of a garage, but one I am excited about. So far, I have blown insulation into the walls, patched up the drywall, insulated and sealed the garage door, installed a portable A/C unit that vents out through the wall, and set up the stands. For stands, I am going with the 65" Husky "Industrial" Garage Shelves. The I-Beam shelves are rated to hold up to 2500 lbs each, which is more than enough to hold one lowboy on each shelf. I did reinforce the shelves by adding additional 2x4 shelf supports since each shelf only came with one support each. On top of the wire rack, I have 3/4 inch Maple plywood (hardwood plywood is actually cheaper than pine here 
). Since the shelves are designed to be connected, I attached the two shelving units together to create three with two shelves each. I'll be leveling the shelving legs using shims.
I have a few things left to do (seal the wood, paint and drill the tanks, etc) but I want to get started planning the plumbing so I can order the parts. That is where I am looking for advice.
Four lowboys will be plumbed into a single 75 gallon sump. One lowboy will have a crushed coral base and run off of an HOB filter for quarantine purposes. I went with a 75 gallon sump because I want as much liverock/media in the sump as I can. I know that I want to have a skimmer section and a refugium.
Here is the plumbing design I have so far. Blue lines are for overflow drain piping. Green is for the return plumbing. Let me know if you see anything wrong with this or if I should change anything. I tried to draw it to minimize the length of pipe necessary to hit all the returns. Missing from the diagram is that I plan to have the reactors on the manifold return their water into the refugium.
Right now, I am torn on *how* I want to plumb it all. Part of me really wants to use flexible plumbing just so it can be easy, but since my only other plumbing experience is with pvc, I'm a bit out of my element.
My plan has the four tanks draining into the sump for manual filtration. I hate filter socks (read: my wife hates when I wash filter socks in *her* washer/dryer) and this isn't going to be a fish-heavy system, so I am probably going to have the tanks drain on top of a raised square of filter floss.
The lowboys will each have a single drain. Right now, I am planning to have four drain lines empty out into the sump (with plenty of unions on each to allow cleaning if one does get clogged). My first question is should I have four drain pipes? Or should I plumb the tanks into two or even one larger main drain line? (IE have two 1" drain lines both flow into a larger 1.5" drain, that way there would only be two 1.5" drains flowing into the sump, as opposed to four 1" drains).
The next question I have is whether I should have one return pump or two. Since I'd like to have a manifold for reactors and a chiller (necessary for a Texas garage setup), my gut is to buy two. Since there's a lot of T's and right angles, it's probably more reasonable to have two than to expect one pump to handle all that head pressure.
I'm also torn on whether I should do pvc for the return lines or just run a soft line to each of the tanks. Part of me thinks that would be easier...
I am interested if anyone has any advice for me. I will probably stop by my local LFS and ask if I can see how they plumb multiple tanks into a single sump. But any advice here would be greatly appreciated.
If you want to follow the progress, I am posting video updates on my TikTok @LoneStarCorals.
Some background, I am self-employed. Something I've always tried to do is find ways to develop my hobbies into legitimate side businesses to be able to take advantage of tax write offs. I started an LLC this year to sell coral and have re-routed my other 1099 gigs through this LLC. I started the coral selling side of the LLC with a single 50-gallon lowboy and after just three months, I am profitable. So, naturally, I want to expand the business.
I am in the process of building out a coral "farm" in my garage. In reality, it will probably be 40% farm, 60% reselling wholesale orders. I live in Texas, so it's a pretty big undertaking to run a fish business out of a garage, but one I am excited about. So far, I have blown insulation into the walls, patched up the drywall, insulated and sealed the garage door, installed a portable A/C unit that vents out through the wall, and set up the stands. For stands, I am going with the 65" Husky "Industrial" Garage Shelves. The I-Beam shelves are rated to hold up to 2500 lbs each, which is more than enough to hold one lowboy on each shelf. I did reinforce the shelves by adding additional 2x4 shelf supports since each shelf only came with one support each. On top of the wire rack, I have 3/4 inch Maple plywood (hardwood plywood is actually cheaper than pine here
). Since the shelves are designed to be connected, I attached the two shelving units together to create three with two shelves each. I'll be leveling the shelving legs using shims.I have a few things left to do (seal the wood, paint and drill the tanks, etc) but I want to get started planning the plumbing so I can order the parts. That is where I am looking for advice.
Four lowboys will be plumbed into a single 75 gallon sump. One lowboy will have a crushed coral base and run off of an HOB filter for quarantine purposes. I went with a 75 gallon sump because I want as much liverock/media in the sump as I can. I know that I want to have a skimmer section and a refugium.
Here is the plumbing design I have so far. Blue lines are for overflow drain piping. Green is for the return plumbing. Let me know if you see anything wrong with this or if I should change anything. I tried to draw it to minimize the length of pipe necessary to hit all the returns. Missing from the diagram is that I plan to have the reactors on the manifold return their water into the refugium.
Right now, I am torn on *how* I want to plumb it all. Part of me really wants to use flexible plumbing just so it can be easy, but since my only other plumbing experience is with pvc, I'm a bit out of my element.
My plan has the four tanks draining into the sump for manual filtration. I hate filter socks (read: my wife hates when I wash filter socks in *her* washer/dryer) and this isn't going to be a fish-heavy system, so I am probably going to have the tanks drain on top of a raised square of filter floss.
The lowboys will each have a single drain. Right now, I am planning to have four drain lines empty out into the sump (with plenty of unions on each to allow cleaning if one does get clogged). My first question is should I have four drain pipes? Or should I plumb the tanks into two or even one larger main drain line? (IE have two 1" drain lines both flow into a larger 1.5" drain, that way there would only be two 1.5" drains flowing into the sump, as opposed to four 1" drains).
The next question I have is whether I should have one return pump or two. Since I'd like to have a manifold for reactors and a chiller (necessary for a Texas garage setup), my gut is to buy two. Since there's a lot of T's and right angles, it's probably more reasonable to have two than to expect one pump to handle all that head pressure.
I'm also torn on whether I should do pvc for the return lines or just run a soft line to each of the tanks. Part of me thinks that would be easier...
I am interested if anyone has any advice for me. I will probably stop by my local LFS and ask if I can see how they plumb multiple tanks into a single sump. But any advice here would be greatly appreciated.
If you want to follow the progress, I am posting video updates on my TikTok @LoneStarCorals.
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