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hows your plumbing?

octomatic;171758 said:
So from the bottom of my stand (where i will put my sump) to the top of my tank is 4ft. What should i shoot for as far a gph of my pump? and should i choose an overflow box that is about 300-400 gph?

I'm thinking a Quiet One 1200 pump, and an overflow that can easily handle at least the 218 gph that it will deliver. A 25% less powerful pump would also be fine. Here's how I got those numbers:

Head distance should be measured from the waterline inside your sump (in the chamber your return pump draws from) to the waterline in your display tank. So if your sump is 6" deep, and the water in your display is 1" below the top edge of your tank, then you have 41" of vertical lift (head) which is 41/12 = 3.4 feet. Assuming that you are using plumbing that doesn't cause much restriction (like 3/4" or 1" inside diameter) you can add 5% and call it 43" of head, 3.6 feet. You have a 37 gallon tank, and the rule of thumb (I think) is that you want to run four of five times your tank volume through your sump per hour, so you want a return pump that will deliver between 150 and 185 gph at 3.6 feet of head. As pumps age and get dirty, they move less water, and the curves might be optimistic, so err on the high side. You can use Google and try to find the output curve (graph) for each pump that you are considering, and find one that says it delivers between 175 and 200 gph at 3.6 feet of head. An easier way to go would be to use one of the online head calculators. Enter your actual head distance (3.4 feet) and some specifics about your plumbing, and pick a pump from the list (all the pump curves for the listed pumps have been entered into the host computer and the calculator uses them to look up your output flow in gph. Keep picking different pumps until you find one that delivers the right amount of flow using the values you've entered. For example, It says that a Quiet One 1200 will deliver 218 gph at 3.48 feet of head (err on the high side). You would then know that your overflow must be able to easily handle 218 gph. If you want more flow inside your tank (which you probably will) I suggest you use a Koralia Nano, which delivers 240 gph. Add that to the 218 you get from your return pump, and you'll have (in Theory) 458 gph of flow in your display. That's 12 times the volume of your tank, which is more than enough (maybe too much for an octopus).
 
okay i just bought the quiet one 1200 pump (great choice by the way, and cheap) and eshopps overflow box rated at a max of 300gph. oh man im so freaking excited!
 

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