DC Return Pump Intensity

[dbroncos]

Hello I have a Red Sea ReefRun 5500 DC Pump on my Reef tank and I have about 4-5 feet of head pressure through the plumbing. My question is if I want to achieve about 530-550 GPH what intensity percentage should I set the pump? This pump has a flow rate of 530-1450. Is there a way to ballpark this without collecting water from the return nozzle into a gallon jug?

 

[Stealthreefer]

Turn it on half strength and I be you're close enough.
Having a controller on my return pump means I end up turning it up and down depending on what's going on in my tank. When the starfish are spawning I turn it to the lowest with new frags I tend to crank it all the way up.
Who knows if it actually makes a difference.

 

[dbroncos]

Turn it on half strength and I be you're close enough.
Having a controller on my return pump means I end up turning it up and down depending on what's going on in my tank. When the starfish are spawning I turn it to the lowest with new frags I tend to crank it all the way up.
Who knows if it actually makes a difference.

thank you

 

[Joe31415]

Turn it on half strength and I be you're close enough.
Having a controller on my return pump means I end up turning it up and down depending on what's going on in my tank. When the starfish are spawning I turn it to the lowest with new frags I tend to crank it all the way up.
Who knows if it actually makes a difference.

Just make sure you're resetting/adjusting your water level if you do that. Turning the return pump up means the sump level falls and if you have an ATO it'll kick on to replace the missing water (lowering your salinity). Turning the flow down means more water in the sump, meaning more has to evaporate before the ATO notices anything (raising your salinity).
Even without an ATO, it's easy to add/remove water manually if you aren't aware this is going to happen.

If I'm adjusting my return pump speed, I always unplug the ATO, get the return adjusted to how I want and then either remove water to lower or add (salt)water to raise the level in the sump back to where it started.

 

[LBCBJ]

Hello I have a Red Sea ReefRun 5500 DC Pump on my Reef tank and I have about 4-5 feet of head pressure through the plumbing. My question is if I want to achieve about 530-550 GPH what intensity percentage should I set the pump? This pump has a flow rate of 530-1450. Is there a way to ballpark this without collecting water from the return nozzle into a gallon jug?

I recently bought a Sicce Syncra SDC 6.0 which is the same pump (the ReefRun is essentially the 6.0 Sicce makes for Red Sea). If you check out Sicce’s site they have a head pressure chart.

At 4.5ft of head pressure the max falls to 792GPH. So you might be looking at around 65-75%. I have 4.5ft of head and run mine at 20% to achieve around 160GPH on my 38g.

 

[dbroncos]

I recently bought a Sicce Syncra SDC 6.0 which is the same pump (the ReefRun is essentially the 6.0 Sicce makes for Red Sea). If you check out Sicce’s site they have a head pressure chart.

At 4.5ft of head pressure the max falls to 792GPH. So you might be looking at around 65-75%. I have 4.5ft of head and run mine at 20% to achieve around 160GPH on my 38g.

thank you

 

[Simon_M]

What percentage are you now running the 5500?

Which tank have you got?

 

[dbroncos]

What percentage are you now running the 5500?

Which tank have you got?

35% Red Sea Reefer 200 G2