Question about remote fish room plumbing-500g tank with Abyzz A400 Return

[Jeffdstafford]

Hello everyone,

I have a plumbing/water flow question for anyone with experience. We will be moving soon to another house, and luckily I'll be able to finally have a fish room for all my equipment. The tank will be placed against an outside wall, which I will drill through to run my drain lines; Four 1.5" drains, which will then need to travel 28ft over to the remote fish room, and then up a couple feet into 4 Theiling Rollermats. I have a 500 gallon display, and the top of the drain pipes are approximately 6ft high, so there will be decent head pressure to push the drain lines. I am using an Abyzz A400 pump for the return, so no worries on getting the water back to the tank, but I have no experience with remotely running the drains anywhere except straight down to my current sump.

What is the best way to accomplish this 28ft run? I'm in west Texas, and we have VERY hot summers, so I'm thinking about running the lines down underground a few inches with insulation to avoid sunlight warming the pipes, then run underground and back up at the fish room wall. Will this setup work to get proper drainage? I don't need a massive turnover rate, but hoping to turn over my volume 2 or 3 times an hour.

I guess the other option is running the pipes above ground at a constant downslope over to the fish room wall? Either way, the side of the home where the piping will be is on the side run of the yard, so no one will ever see it, so I've got the freedom to do this in the most efficient way.

Any suggestions?

Thanks all!
Jeff

 

[mcarroll]

It seems like the fish room being that far away eliminates a good bit of the convenience.

Amd I understanding righ that the drains are going to be run outside to another building?? Sounds like a possible heating/cooling problem in the making, but I make be confused. Is this outside part necessary or optional?

 

[Jeffdstafford]

Well, I guess it would be labeled optionally necessary I've run my current setup for a couple years with everything jammed under the tank, but properly cleaning and maintaining everything is a nightmare for me, and probably the biggest reason for piping out to the fish room would be for better access to all my equipment as well as room to spread out in there for a neater setup.

I'm wanting to know from anyone who's done something like this what kind of friction loss is experienced with a gravity fed piping run of this length, and then like you mention, if there is going to be a large temperature effect..and if going underground will help mitigate this.

 

[Jeffdstafford]

Also I must add; with my setup I'm not going for the easiest, most simple way to run the system..I'm one of those sick folks who enjoys somewhat overcomplicating things, and the operational side is just as much fun for me as the tank inhabitants, so don't try to make sense of this from a completely sane person's point of view!

 

[BlueCursor]

I have my fish room in the basement. Tank is on the 1st floor. I have a 16' raise and a 25' horizontal run. With the correct pump, this is no problem. Your pump should be fine. I looked and couldn't find a graph that showed maximum flow based on head height. But with a maximum head height of 30', if should be at 4,000 g/h at 6'. Try to find that graph though, to confirm the head height of 6' at 2000 g/h is doable.

You can run 4 1.5" drain tubes or you can run 2 2.25" runs, or 1 3.5" run. Use PVC tubing. Since they will run outside, you need to insulate them and may need to add a chiller in your fish room. With the 1.5" tubing you can buy foam covers for the tubing. Not sure how they hold up to UV from the sun.

Your drain tubes need to have a drop of 1" for every 10 feet, or they won't drain well. That 1" drop / 10' is a minimum. More is better. Instead of 4 1.5" drains I would probably go with 2 2.5" tubes. This is some extra width for the long run and draining. Join them near the tank and only drill 2 holes through your wall.

The biggest issue is controlling your pump from the house. You have to go with something like Apex. It drove me up the wall going down to the basement to turn the pump off during feeding time. There are other solutions like Insteon outlets that can be controlled remotely, too.

Next, put a cam in the fish room. You want to see your skimmer and the light on your ATO to make sure everything is fine. You want to do water changes in your fish room. You will want an RO unit out there. I assume you have water and drainage in the fish room.

That covers the main points, I hope.

 

[mcarroll]

Understood!

No way to get the tank on the same end of the universe as the fish room though, eh?

Insulation would be recommended....don't think burying would be good for that.

I would only try to make the water go down.

 

[BlueCursor]

Underground, that may be a good idea, but what does down has to come back up.

 

[mcarroll]

Your drain tubes need to have a drop of 1" for every 10 feet, or they won't drain well. That 1" drop / 10' is a minimum. More is better. Instead of 4 1.5" drains I would probably go with 2 2.5" tubes. This is some extra width for the long run and draining. Join them near the tank and only drill 2 holes through your wall.

Bingo!!

 

[Jeffdstafford]

So in regards to the 1"/10ft, do you think hands down it would be more efficient to do an above ground constant downslope against the wall vs straight down from the wall holes, underground, then come back up a couple feet at the fish room? Seems obvious that all down and no upward flow is more efficient, but would it be night and day difference do you think? If I had to run it all above ground against the house, I could build some sort of housing around it to shield from the sun as well as having insulation on the pipes, again, since it won't be visible.

Concerning the Abyzz head pressure, I have no concerns about it; currently I have it running the tank returns, a manifold for all my reactors and external skimmer, as well as a chiller loop that goes up 10ft, through the attic horizontally about 25ft, down to the chiller, then returns, and the pump is only running at 85%, so this thing is an absolute monster.

And totally agree a controller, I've got an extensive Apex system setup, but I also picked up the new GHL Profilux 4 that I'm going to run in parallel for redundancy-also to feed that gadget sickness, so I'll have the automation end going.

Lastly, I'll run water to the room, and I run an AWC setup through the Apex DOS, and currently run my drain line up into the attic, into a vent drain, so I'll do something similar for waste water, and just water the garden or something with the RO wastewater.


Thanks for all the excellent points so far, keep them coming!

 

[seastar]

I haven't done this myself - so I'll let other's chime in but I'd sure thing\k underground + insulated is a no brainer. Tehaus can get pretty cold too no? Will that external room be climate controlled? A DT that size will have a large sump I'm assuming.

 

[BlueCursor]

You can't "come back up" at the sump. This will negatively impact your draining. This kind of kills the underground thing. If you go underground what will happen is the drain tube will be 100% full of water, and the only gravity benefit you will get is the short length of vertical pipe between the bottom of your tank and the same height at the top of the sump in your fish room. And that couple of feet of pipe water has to push all the water in the 28' of pipe. So it won't work.

You need to exit the wall in your house high enough that your drain pipe drops at least 1" per every 10' and the tube never curls back up. This means the pipe has to have a 90 degree bend above the sump that points down into the sump, and the rest of the pipe must be higher than this turn.

 

[BlueCursor]

+1 on the external fish room being climate controlled, or your chiller and heater must be able to compensate.

 

[PedroYoung]

I'd be concerned that any drain line that doesn't go down all the way to the sump is going to be full of detritus before long. Fish poop and uneaten food won't want to flow "up".

 

[Jeffdstafford]

I haven't done this myself - so I'll let other's chime in but I'd sure thing\k underground + insulated is a no brainer. Tehaus can get pretty cold too no? Will that external room be climate controlled? A DT that size will have a large sump I'm assuming.

Yes the ole Lone Star State can get quite chilly, but heat is the concern probably 70% of the time. There is a heating/cooling unit in the room, so that will assist in controlling temp of the overall system. And yes, planning a large sump system out there..currently I have a baffled sump that probably holds around 100 gallons, and I'm probably going to add another 100-300 gallons out there.. Haven't gotten the final details worked out yet.

You can't "come back up" at the sump. This will negatively impact your draining. This kind of kills the underground thing. If you go underground what will happen is the drain tube will be 100% full of water, and the only gravity benefit you will get is the short length of vertical pipe between the bottom of your tank and the same height at the top of the sump in your fish room. And that couple of feet of pipe water has to push all the water in the 28' of pipe. So it won't work.

You need to exit the wall in your house high enough that your drain pipe drops at least 1" per every 10' and the tube never curls back up. This means the pipe has to have a 90 degree bend above the sump that points down into the sump, and the rest of the pipe must be higher than this turn.

Good point.. There will be a lot of water in that horizontal flat piping, I think I'll scratch that off the list.

I'd be concerned that any drain line that doesn't go down all the way to the sump is going to be full of detritus before long. Fish poop and uneaten food won't want to flow "up".

Another good point.. That upward section would definitely accumulate a lot of detritus, didn't think about this.

 

[Jeffdstafford]

+1 on the external fish room being climate controlled, or your chiller and heater must be able to compensate.

Yep, I've got a 1hp chiller that pretty easily handles the system, and a couple heaters take care of the winter months. I run the Abyzz return and a couple Red Dragon 230watt pumps on closed loop, so between the pumps and lights, the heater doesn't run much in the winter.

Between these and the heating/cooling unit, hopefully shouldn't have much of an issue.

 

[BlueCursor]

FYI, I'm in Minnesota. My basement is about 68 degrees at night during the winter (no need to heat it during the winter when we are asleep). I found that my 500W heater can't quite keep my 100gal tank at 78 degrees during the winter. The heater is sometimes on for an hour straight.

 

[tj w]

Jeff, I would run the drain lines along the outside and have them insulated. I actually run a commercial-industrial pipe insulation company here in Abilene. You can mount the lines to the side of the house and have them insulated and covered with aluminum to protect the insulation. It will do the trick.

 

[Jeffdstafford]

FYI, I'm in Minnesota. My basement is about 68 degrees at night during the winter (no need to heat it during the winter when we are asleep). I found that my 500W heater can't quite keep my 100gal tank at 78 degrees during the winter. The heater is sometimes on for an hour straight.

Gotcha, that's actually surprising that it doesn't get colder than 68 during the Minnesota winters..seems like it would stay much colder than that in your Artic Tundra!

Jeff, I would run the drain lines along the outside and have them insulated. I actually run a commercial-industrial pipe insulation company here in Abilene. You can mount the lines to the side of the house and have them insulated and covered with aluminum to protect the insulation. It will do the trick.

Sounds like you know this stuff; I'll hit you up when I get to this step to see what type of insulation you'd recommend for this