How Much Water Flows through a 3/4 Inch bulkhead

I have a 240 Gallon tank, I am setting up the wet dry right know. I have 8 holes spaced evenly all along the center of the bottom of the tank. Would the overflow through 2 3/4 Inch bulkheads be enough to get the turnover required for a tank this size. I assume the turnover should be around 900-1000 gallons per hour. Thanks, Justin
 

pat

Member
not sure on the flow rates through the 3/4 in holes, but thats a little low on the turnover man, thats about where i sit on my 100, my 200 will be at about 1800 gph. by the way, im gonna look for the pics and get em e-mailed to you as soon as i find em, cool?
 

broomer5

Active Member
Depends if you are talking about the amount of water passing through your wet dry filter media ( which it sounds like ) or total turnover of water circulation within the tank.
They are different things entirely.
Rule of thumb for filtration turnover is around 3-5 times the total tank volume in GPH
Rule of thumb for total tank circulation is around 5-10 times the total tank volume in GPH, which includes filtration turnover.
Of course these are just estimates and people design their tanks water flows however they want.
Gravity feed overflow - assuming you have total freefall of the water, with no restrictions in the line to the sump, would have to calculate it to be exact - but off hand I believe a 3/4" bulkhead fitting with 3/4" pipe ID, with a 22 inch vertical riser would normally pass about 400-500 GPH water.
If I had that set up I'd either increase the drilled hole diameter or use more of the 8 holes besides just the two. You could then be confident on using a higher rated pump, divert some of the water overflow to your wet/dry, divert another portion of the water from the other overflows to your sump to increase your tank circulation. Valve it all off underneath with a series of ball valves, like a manifold, that would allow you to make changes once installed and up/running.
In other words - don't limit yourself up front before you add your substrate and rock ..etc. Once the tanks filled - you don't want to find out you can't get enough flow back to your sump and wet/dry .. ya know.
 
It is going to be a Aggressive tank, w/ 2 or 3 small sharks, a ray, and a few fish. I am really confused as to what I should do. I have numerous large powerheads I can add in the tank for circulation. I am going to have a wet/dry, fluidized bed filter, 36 watt uv, and a large protein skimmer (yet to be chosen) The diameter of the bulkhead itself is a little over 1 1/2 inches, is the 1 inch diameter tubing have the same size bulkhead as the 3/4 inch. My biggest concern is I do not want to have a 3 or 4 overflow boxes in the tank. I want them to have as much room as possible to move around. And Also its an eye sore. I don't know what size pump or anything to use. I really appreciate all of your help guys. This stuff can get really confusing Thanks, Justin
 
I am going to measure the holes this weekend, and I will let you know. I just got a quote for a custom skimmer and wet dry, it was 1600 Dollars, I guess its cup o noodle soup for a while. Check out the details. Justin
Two acrylic prefilters (black) with overflow teeth. These will be 5" sided squares and will go up to the top of the tank, and they are to be cemented to the tank bottom.
2. Wet-Dry filter with skimmer and sump section and all necessary bulkhead fittings and biomedia.
3. Custom dual stack EV skimmer to fit 21" high stand
The "bioball" section in the digram is approx. 36" x 14" x 13" which means 30 gallons of biomedia. This should be the right amount for the expected bioload
 
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