Closed Loop

[sagent3000]

Okay i am getting ready to buy another tank. currently i have a 4' 75 gallon and i am going to switch to a 4' 90 gallon. the problem i am having is that my tunze 6080 puts out WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY to much water so i was thinking about just doing a closed loop with NO powerheads tell me what you think about this closed loop idea

Have a total of 6 holes drilled in the back. 3 holes on each side. One hole on each side is drilled two inches from the top and 4 inches from the very corner part of the tank. These two holes are were the water is sucked from the tank.

The other four holes act as the return are drilled as follows:
One hole on each side is drilled 4-6 inches from the top and 2-3 inches from the side. The other two holes are just opposite of the first holes at the bottom of the tank.

The two drain holes have 1" female black pvc bulkheads with 1" male black screens in the tank and white pvc glued on the outside of the tank. The return holes have 1" black pvc bulkheads with 1" lock line in the tank and white pvc glued on the outside of the tank.

The drain line come together and are run through a chiller and the pushed back into the tank through the 4 inlets

On both sides just after the drain screen install ball valves. There will also be ball valves just before the return points.

Then have two return mag700 are on a wave timer. I have not figured out which way to point the returns yet though

OR

should i just stick with the tunze powerhead

[Alexander]

I have a closed loop system on my 180, I love it! it looks way better than powerheads. sadly my blueline 40 pump doesn't have as much flow as I need so I'm left with 2 decisions. new, bigger pump or powerheads in addition to closed loop. just make sure you buy the right pump for the flow you desire, and make sure yiu factor in head for your gph as your flow isn't comping directly from your pump, though I'm sure you have probably already figured that much

[sagent3000]

is there anyone else that has a closed loop or can give me their opinion of that they think about how i am goind ot do my closed loop

[Bifferwine]

Redline is the only one that I know of that has one. Sorry.

[Alexander]

I'm doung this from my phone so hopefully it makes sense. its simple. all yiu need is 1 hole drilled for the closed loop. this hole needs whatever size bulkhead you want, probably the same size as the inlet of whatever pump you decide to go with so you don't have to mess with tons of slip joints and things like that. that bulkhead needs a prefilter on it so you don't suck all kinds of crap through the external pump. pipe your return off the other end of the pump and split it into however many outlets you want. use 90s to bend them over and down into the tank and use directional nipple deals (yep said nipple) on the ends so you can point the flow whatever direction you want. I think that about covers it. I can take any pictures you want just let me know. I hope maybe some of that was info you were looking for

[Oscarsdad608]

Check out Melevreef. he has a spot for building a closed loop. Looks very easy. I was thinking of doing one myself. Is there such a thing as to much flow. When we snorkled in Jamaica I couldn't even flot in one area without being shot about 10 feet.

[fatman]

The nice thing about closed loops is you do not have to return back over the top of tank and you do not have huge turbulent flows of water in your sump. Just run volume of flow through your sump needed by skimmer and refugium. Bulkhead out is usually same size as pump feed, but long lines to pump or lots of fittings, 90's and 45's, usually mean its safer to use one size larger bulkhead and pipe for feed and return through a T to a greater number of bulkhead returns. If they are threaded bulkheads of 1/2' or 3/4' you can easily use Loc-line fittings for directional and nozzle control. Remember a recommended flow through a coral holding reef tank anymore is a 10-20 times tank size turnover per hour. And that will probably increase again for SPS cora. So unless you like redrilling bulkhead holes and buying and replacing bulkheads, valves, pipes and fittings, go with one hole size larger than you now need. Commercial predrilled tanks are inhrently undersized at the overflow bulkhead. And no siphoning issues caused by power outages with closed loop circulation. No figuring out where to put anti syphon bleed holes and suc. Easy to got your circulation up to 10-20 tankturnovers per hour when keeping SPS's. I ramble to much. Sorry! Make sure and use gate valves for good control of volume, on pump outflow side, (ball valves for just on and off applications) and control velocity through pipe and nozzle size. And unions are nearly a must. I have cut a lot of overflow and return holes. Easy and readily fairly cheap to boot. If you want I will provide a site address which will supply slotted return boxs with bulkheads afixed. Look a lot better tham typical strainers and only protrude 2" imto tank.