plumbing question?

tboy

tboy

Member
Hi
I planning to set up an aquarium in my house. Planning to place the tank in family and the sump and filtration (fish room) in my garage. They like 20ft. apart.
Question. Thinking of from the tank, drilling a hole to outside the house and run pipes along the siding of the house then come back into the garage. All piping will be instalation. I live NJ so winter here does get very cold sometime. Will this work?
Question. I have 2 built-in overflow. Each have drain and return. Can I use all 4 for drain? I'm thinking 2 to drain to sump and 2 for close-loop.
It proberly end up with not egnough water in the overlow but I think we can make the mouth of the overlow bigger. Will this work?
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
As for running the pipe outside the house, yes, it should. You'll obviously want to use heavy insulation, and you'll want to arrange a setup to where water will always be flowing through the pipes, or can easily be drained from the pipes to prevent freezing. If the pipes are well insulated and water is always flowing through, they should not freeze. Be prepared to upsize your heaters some to make up the heat loss through the pipes. Also, you'll want to have a backup power plan so that in the event of a power failure (whcih often occurs during the coldest time of the year...), you can keep water flowing.
Yes, you can use all four for drain, but a closed loop with it's intake inside an overflow might be tricky.
 
tboy

tboy

Member
Yes, you can use all four for drain, but a closed loop with it's intake inside an overflow might be tricky.
should I make the mouth of the overflow bigger?
And why is it tricky?
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
A closed loop is not designed to have it's intake fed by an overflow. It generally draws water from an intake placed well below the waterline.
Theoretically, if you set up your sump overflows properly, you can ensure that the overflow boxes always have a good bit of water in them, allowing a closed loop to exist. Unfortunately, this brings you to your next problem. Most overflows are only designed to handle a certain amount of water... if it's an AGA overflow for instance, that is ususually 600gph.
Say you have a 1" pipe draining 600gph down to the sump. Now you tie a Mag 9.5's intake line to the 3/4" bulkhead to create a closed loop. That 9.5 is going to forcibly suction well over 600GPH on it's own throught that bulkhead, making the total flow into that overflow box 1200gph or more. It's possible that the overflow box itself cannot pass that much water. So if that's what you mean about making the mouth of the overflow bigger... I suppose you can do that, if you don't mind hacking away at your overflow box.
 
tboy

tboy

Member
Hi. Change planed a little bit
Basically now, I'll have 2 display tank. A 220g and a 58g. Both has built in overlow and run to supplies room (garage). Currently, I have a 75g sump and fuge and a asm3 skimmer. I'm not too crazy about the sump and the fuge together in one tank and not too crazy about the skimmer.
Include is pic of the sump now. Either modify a little bit or start a whole new sump.
Being having a fish room in my garage. I now have lots of space and like to get it done right at the first time than keep messing aroung with it.
Question. Is the asm3 skimmer good egnough for the two tank? I like to minimize the cost of putting the tank back up as much as possible but if I have to get a different one. Which one should be best for this set-up.
I like to have a least four filter socks built in the sump.
I will built a table over the sump and have a fragging tank, small tank for macro, etc.



 
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