Return pump plumbing ideas

Burning Spear · Feb 6, 2009

Hello everyone, my first post here.

I am setting up a 120g oceanic tech tank.

I am looking for input on my return plumbing. My pump is an Dolphin Amp master 3200 which has about 2700gph@ 3'. I will keep clams, 80% sps and 20% lps/soft corals. I will have a DSB aprox 3"-4". I have two Tunze 6100's and a MP40w too. Since there will be LPS present in the tank I do not want to over power with flow. My first idea was two 3/4 sea swirls on the back of the tank blowing forward and two fixed returns with lockline at the front of the tank blowing back towards the sea swirls. If I was not keeping LPS I would have no worries. The return pump will also tee off to feed a calcium reactor and a fuge so I figure with the head height and t off I am looking at 2200-2300 gph.

macawmagic · Feb 6, 2009

i think that's A LOT of flow for a return. for a 120 i think you'd be perfect with the 2 6100's, a vortech, and like 600gph return...LOL

I've got a 75. about 500 gph return through a 3/4 sea swirl. and then a sureflow 2100 on each side. it's perfect!

Burning Spear · Feb 6, 2009

Thank you for your comment. I would like to install a spraybar/liverock support however I do not want to see the pipe running down the back of the tank. My last aquarium had PVC racks to support the live rock off the sand bed and I drilled tiny holes in the pipe and connected the structure to my return. It worked well minus the appearance of pipes running down the back of the tank.

I do like the sea swirl product. Maybe I will just use two and throttle back the return pump to 1000 gph. 500 gph per swirl.

I plan to set the tank up in a few weeks. I bought a protein skimmer yesterday.