Returning with 65g build

[Subsea]

Great question, thank you!

I have read over the years that it's not a good idea to run greatly oversized skimmers, it's been said that they pull much more water than actual skimmate. I guess this would be my concern.

As you noted, I believe that a skimmer is important for gas exchange if nothing else, and that's why I suggested that the OP at least tries the skimmer that they have. I believe that a poorly tuned skimmer does a lot for gas exchange, even if nothing else

Would you think that the OP's skimmer is to large? I'd appreciate your insight here

I don’t see pulling more water than skimmate as a bad thing. It doubles as a partial water change, which is seldom a bad thing. Advanced hobbyists like Lasse don’t do water changes and in Lasse’s case he feeds skimmate thru his sandbed.

More than one way to be a reefer.

 

[drewcrew22]

Would this be an easy fix? Would resealing it cause problems?

 

[Fish Fan]

I don't think that will affect the operation of the tank much at all once it's up and running. You could try to plug it with some silicon from the inside of the overflow, but if it was me I wouldn't worry about that too much.

 

[drewcrew22]

Thoughts?

 

[drewcrew22]

Idk if the vids are working on your guys end but it shows no image on mine. Please let me know if there not working I’ll try to repost

 

[drewcrew22]

I think you got a great score, Reef Octopus is quality stuff. I think the Varios 4 may be overkill on your 65, but you can dial it back and see. same with the skimmer, it might be a bit oversized, but I'd try it anyway. The rating the manufacturers give these skimmers (for 125 gallon tanks) is not the same rating hobbyist would give them

That’s with the flow at the lowest possible rate

 

[Bevy]

Thoughts?

Plumbing adds "head height" and will definitely affect the water pressure coming out of the return. You could also split the return with a Y like you mentioned which would also lower the pressure. If it were me I'd check the rating of the pump. The idea is you would add up the distance your pump, uh, pumps, up to the return and compare to a head height graph. There's was an amount to add in height for elbow fittings also but it escapes me.
Here's the head height chart for the varios pumps, yellow line is the varios 4. These graphs give a ballpark.

Less scientifically, Octo says the varios 2 supports up to 65 gallons and the varios 4 supports up to 90 gallons, so I don't think you're that far off the intended use case IMO. I'd run it.

Also to throw my 2c in for plumbing I had a durso + emergency setup on my 90 gallon and loved it.

 

[drewcrew22]

Thoughts?

Plumbing adds "head height" and will definitely affect the water pressure coming out of the return. You could also split the return with a Y like you mentioned which would also lower the pressure. If it were me I'd check the rating of the pump. Here's the head height chart for the varios pumps, yellow line is the varios 4. These graphs give a ballpark.

Less scientifically, Octo says the varios 2 supports up to 65 gallons and the varios 4 supports up to 90 gallons, so I don't think you're that far off the intended use case IMO. I'd run it.

Also to throw my 2c in for plumbing I had a durso + emergency setup on my 90 gallon and loved it.

Okay based of the chart and your thoughts I think the return will actually work perfectly?

Not to sound like a total idiot but I’m not sure what that is to be honest.

 

[Bevy]

Okay based of the chart and your thoughts I think the return will actually work perfectly?

Not to sound like a total idiot but I’m not sure what that is to be honest.

I think it will be ok. I don't know how many feet it is from the return section of the sump up to the return nozzle, but if I'm ballparking I'd guess it's probably 3.5ish feet up with a 90 degree elbow (adds 1 foot of head height) so let's call it 4.5 feet of head height. The max GPH is 1050, and lowers to around 750ish at max speed if you look at where the yellow line intersects with the 4.5 on the bottom axis. That's roughly a 40% decrease. The lowest speed at setting 1 is 740 per this chart:

so if we lower that by 40% that's roughly 450 gallons per hour. Most folks shoot for 3-10x turnover rate, which for 65 gallons is 195-650gph. so you're in the upper third of flow based on my SUPER rough napkin math and assumption of your head height.

Which is what this is, very on-the-fly napkin math as actually calculating flow takes a lot more factors into consideration, like pipe diameter, but doing that much math is scary. And, I'm not an expert so I could be WAY off anyways, this is just how I'd be trying to work it out for myself if this were my tank/situation. If you want more accurate numbers, measure the sump-to-return-nozzle height yourself and recalculate.

Hopefully this helps and doesn't leave you more confused. I'm a network engineer by profession and have heard before that we generally suck at explaining things in a way that's easy lol

 

[Fish Fan]

From the video I don't think that looks like too much for the return pump. Once you add the pipes and fittings it will be even less.

 

[drewcrew22]

You’ll are freaking amazing. I can’t express how much I appreciate all the help and support. I would not have the balls to even attempt this if R2R wasn’t here. Watching videos is great and helpful but actually being able to talk to someone about it makes a world of difference.