OP
OP
Diazreeflife
Active Member
Good advice here....will give my $0.02 as well.
Having a monster return pump is old-school. Before there were propeller pumps such as the Tunze Stream (now they have the Stream 2 and Nanostreams), increasing the size of your return pump was as good or better than adding little nozzle pumps/powerheads like the MaxiJet in the tank.
In some situations, a huge return pump is still required, but it's almost always due to a sump being located in the basement below the tank - not for higher flow per se.
These days your return pump is primarily used to feed your filters (often just a skimmer) in the sump. 2x - 4x the gallonage of your display in gallons per hour is all the flow you really need to shoot for. 250-500 gph of actual throughput should be great! Any more than that and you are usually wasting power and creating noise and bubble issues anyway.
For water flow in the tank - since it is such a long, narrow tank - I would pick Tunze powerheads based on performance. Their flow is still directional where almost every other flow pump on the market has a very wide flow - many are even non-directional or only very slightly adjustable. Being able to aim the flow literally however you want it, as well as being able to channel it across the 72" length of the tank will be very handy and that'll be difficult or impossible with most other powerheads. I think you could get by with a minimum of 1-2 Tunze powerheads, depending on how the tank turns out. IMO you would need a minimum of three or more powerheads of wide flow design, and I don't think you'd be as happy with the results.
Hope this helps!
-Matt
Very good info! I am going with two powerheads but I'm going with JEBAO WP-40's which are directional. After lots of research and reading all good reviews are their insane power and great quality build I think they are the way to go and not to mention the price.
