Adding water flow in a 30g

heide264

Member
I've been trying to turn my mind around this problem for the past couple days with my recent tank clean out. My sand bed is well, "junkified" and is being siphoned out overtime. I need to get some more flow in the tank to keep the junk away from the sand bed and off the rocks it is already settling on.
It's a 30g reef tank.
As it stands I have a HOB emperor filter (its the one sided model - I think 200gph ballpark) which I would like to get rid of long term after I fix my algae issue, an aquaC remora powered by a maxijet (I might swap out that maxi-jet soon, it looks like it's starting to lose a lot of flow through the skimmer), and a sump which is not putting much turnover through the display tank at all - maybe 25-50gph (limited on the 1" plumbing from the drilled hole - will fix that when I get some cash this summer).
I have about 5 power heads floating around which I can stick in my rock work for now, but I had a bad experience with a power head frying which caused all but my 2 clowns and a watchmen to die while I was up at school. Basically, I'd like to avoid in tank power heads
- they fall off the glass and they are generally a pain.
I am thinking about doing a small closed loop system if possible. I know it won't be the prettiest thing with all the returns being plumbed down from the top of the tank. I don't even know where to start on this and was wondering if anybody had some suggestions as to equipment pump wise and gph. I have a couple pictures of the tank setup on this link... http://www.photoshop.com/user/heide2...BTAGC&wf=share
I have read around on them a bit, but it seems most are done on huge tanks or have more holes drilled for returns etc. I was thinking about 3-5 returns that basically just go straight down and have a 90 at whatever elevation my rock work ended up allowing.
Any suggestions would be awesome. Here is the tank as it stands so you don't have to follow the link if you just want a quick look...
 

heide264

Member
Yeah I have had my eyes on those for a while. Great, great idea. I am not sure how side to side flow would work in the tank. I think I need front to back flow to keep stuff off my sandbed. Will keep my eyes on it for sure though.
EDIT:
Well, I found an alternate solution. My dad can get a deal off Little Giant products. They have a pump that is 410gph at 6' of head (overestimate on the head there most likely) - the 2-MDQX-SC. I am going to scoop one of them up. Going to split the return line 3-4 different ways and plumb the returns down about a foot or so. Hopefully I can mess with my 1" return plumbing enough to allow more flow =).
 
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