Upgrading to a 40 Breeder!

blank · Sep 21, 2016

chris31759 said:
In my opinion nothing beats a Bean Animal style overflow for safety and low noise. If you do use spa flex, you need to use the multi purpose glue in the red can from Oatley instead of the gold can. There are more expensive glues or cements but the red can works just fine.

I was going to do Bean animal... and I guess I still can. Just need to grab a 90 that I can plug a pipe into... Do you think it's necessary? I think 2 drains + and emergency is already enough xD

chris31759 · Sep 21, 2016

Here is a link to synergy reef overflow. I run my bean animal exactly how you have your current 3 pipes set up. Primary is the lowest with the two 90's, secondary trickle is just a straight pipe slightly higher than the bulkheads coming from the tank to the overflow and the emergency at a 1/2" below the top of the overflow box. http://reef2reef.com/threads/synergy-reef-overflow-placement.229412/
Your eshopps overflow should work very similar.

blank · Sep 21, 2016

chris31759 said:
Here is a link to synergy reef overflow. I run my bean animal exactly how you have your current 3 pipes set up. Primary is the lowest with the two 90's, secondary trickle is just a straight pipe slightly higher than the bulkheads coming from the tank to the overflow and the emergency at a 1/2" below the top of the overflow box. http://reef2reef.com/threads/synergy-reef-overflow-placement.229412/
Your eshopps overflow should work very similar.

Oh don't even need to get 90 elbow with a pipe thing. Looks like I can just drill a small hole in the top. It seems like everyone uses 2 90's on their secondary.. You use just a straight pipe? Wouldn't that just be the herbie method? I'll probably just pull the red drain a bit higher so that it's right above the overflow!

blank · Sep 21, 2016

I think I got it!

chris31759 · Sep 21, 2016

In theory you could run straight pipes on all three. The 90's on the primary siphon overflow prevents clogging a little bit better than a straight pipe. The only negative of the 90's is they can trap air preventing or slowing down the process of the full siphon. This is why some people drill a small hole in the first bend of the first 90 to help start the full siphon quicker. Some people use the 1" strainer instead of the two 90's. Others have put the 90's on the secondary overflow. In this case you would drill a small whole on top of the 90's and run a small piece of airline tubing into it similar to a durso system. I don't know of any easy way to explain this. Herbie's use one full siphon that has to be fine tuned and adjusted over time and an emergency drain. Bean Animal just adds the secondary trickle overflow drain. This is easier to adjust with adjustments to the output of your return pump. Herbie style overflows work well but are not as quite as a Bean Animal in my opinion. I run a Herbie system on my 90 gal reef ready tank and have dialed it in the be very quite. Since that tank came predrilled, it is the only option I feel safe using. since you are only running a Mag 7, you could probably run a Herbie system without much noise. I run a Vectra M1 on my 40 and the Bean Animal can handle that pump running at over 70% with no problems. I have set up a manifold off the return pump to supply water to my GFO reactor, Carbon Reactor and Algae Turf Scrubber. With all three running I can turn up the M1 to around 90%. I ran the manifold and return plumbing in 1" to two return lines were I reduce it down to 3/4" and then screw in 3/4 " dual loc lines for a total of 4 return jets. This provides tons of flow with very few dead spots in the tank. I would post a few pictures but I can't figure out how to get a small enough file size on my android phone. Once again good luck. I would recommend testing the system with fresh water to get an idea how everything works. Remember to add unions everywhere.

blank · Sep 21, 2016

I don't think an explanation gets much better than that! Thanks a lot! I think I get it now

blank · Sep 21, 2016

So I've decided to make my piping for the return entirely vinyl. I'm going to have a Y piece to seperate it to 2 return outlets. I was planning on running my mag-7 at full power anyways so I think it's fine. I'll be adding the other sears gate to my secondary drain so that I can precisely control how much water is flowing into my fuge!

chris31759 · Sep 21, 2016

That sounds like a great plan. Put everything together and give it a try. If it isn't near silent, let me know I can make a few other recommendations. Vinyl works great. You can even make short U shaped pvc returns to connect to the vinyl with a barb fitting.

blank · Sep 21, 2016

chris31759 said:
That sounds like a great plan. Put everything together and give it a try. If it isn't near silent, let me know I can make a few other recommendations. Vinyl works great. You can even make short U shaped pvc returns to connect to the vinyl with a barb fitting.

Just wanting to make sure but is 1/2" vinyl fine? or should I get a adapter and bring the size up to 3/4?

chris31759 · Sep 21, 2016

That will work. This will add additional head pressure resulting in slightly less flow or gph. I still think this will be more than enough for the 40. You should still be around 700 gph which is more than 10x turnover. Your overflow can handle more flow if you ever want to plumb the returns in 1" or 3/4" PVC. If the output of the Mag 7 is 1/2" then stay with the 1/2" vinyl. It sounds like you have everything figured out now. Let me know if you have any other questions.

blank · Sep 21, 2016

chris31759 said:
That will work. This will add additional head pressure resulting in slightly less flow or gph. I still think this will be more than enough for the 40. You should still be around 700 gph which is more than 10x turnover. Your overflow can handle more flow if you ever want to plumb the returns in 1" or 3/4" PVC. If the output of the Mag 7 is 1/2" then stay with the 1/2" vinyl. It sounds like you have everything figured out now. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Haha! Looks like I'm good! Going to buy some black vinyl and the y fitting and set it all up probably by Saturday at the latest! Let's see how this turns out

blank · Sep 22, 2016

Just some small changes. I'm going to add a T piece to my return vinyl and just have it return to my refugium so that I don't have to have a line running from my main Display tank to it. I want both those tanks to be at the same level. So the plan is all 3 drains from the display will go to the sump and a drain from the fuge tank to the sump and return will return to both! I'm adding a Two little fishes ball valve thing so I can greatly reduce the flow to my fuge tank. I can also just add a 2nd pump, I have a mag 2 pump laying around but I think that's unneeded

blank · Sep 22, 2016

blank said:
Just some small changes. I'm going to add a T piece to my return vinyl and just have it return to my refugium so that I don't have to have a line running from my main Display tank to it. I want both those tanks to be at the same level. So the plan is all 3 drains from the display will go to the sump and a drain from the fuge tank to the sump and return will return to both! I'm adding a Two little fishes ball valve thing so I can greatly reduce the flow to my fuge tank. I can also just add a 2nd pump, I have a mag 2 pump laying around but I think that's unneeded

Reason I'm doing this is that I don't have that great of a height difference between my display and frag if I were to gravity feed it from Display -> Fuge -> sump so there would be a large risk of flooding! Besides I feel like Display -> Sump and Fuge -> Sump would just be much easier to set up! Only problem is if the drain from the fuge tank were to clog, I would have a flood :/ It's a nano overflow from glassholes. I'll have to think of a safety measure to prevent that.

enzo · Sep 24, 2016

blank said:
Haha feel free to talk about it on here. How far above from the waterline is your kessil at? and what intensity?

The light is now 9" off the top of the water line and the intensity is set at 85. It took a while to get it to 85 when I first started the lights where 14" off the top and the intensity was set at 50. Even then it was a little strong if you buy the controller it has a acclamation setting.

blank · Sep 24, 2016

enzo said:
The light is now 9" off the top of the water line and the intensity is set at 85. It took a while to get it to 85 when I first started the lights where 14" off the top and the intensity was set at 50. Even then it was a little strong if you buy the controller it has a acclamation setting.

Im setting up the plumbing and putting down my aquascape tomorrow

with 3 different light sources, I'm sure it'll be pretty overkill. I'll post a picture when it's ready!

enzo · Sep 24, 2016

can't wait to see it.

blank · Sep 25, 2016

Alright!

Got all the pvc done yesterday and let it cure. Just put water in. Waiting for a bit more to be made.
The TLF vinyl ball gate works very well controlling flow. I don't have the fuge filled yet. My rockscape is definitely mediocre. When the water clears up, I'll put up another picture i'd love some opinions. I'll give a full equipment/supplies update later too.