Questions on Closed Loop

royalgamma

royalgamma

Member
I have a 44 gallon corner tank and was thinking of trying to plum my own CL
. My 1st question is could I just put a "in pipe in the tank with somekind of cover and then have the "outs" be my returns... Kinda like a giant power head. I want to get rid of my power heads and was thinking this shouldn't be too hard, but I don't have a sump or anything.
Thanks for dealing with the 1st of many questions ( i'm sure there will be alot more if I attempt this )
 
acrylic51

acrylic51

Active Member
Your idea would work, but you'd have issues with getting the pump to pick up the water and when the power would go out you'd have the same issue as well....most pumps need and should be flooded with water.....
 
royalgamma

royalgamma

Member
ok then lets start from the begining...how do most CL work then.
1. Do they use a sump for the "in" water? Because I thought that a CL was just that...closed off from any other part of your system? :notsure: 2. I guess I don't know as much as I thought.
Thanks for any help..its appreciated

I might be moving soon, if so I am going to upgrade to a 55 or 75 gallon tank and I would like to learn some of this DYI stuff.
 
tree

tree

Member
A closed loop takes water from the main display and then pumps it back into the main display. The point Acrylic51 was making is that by going over the top you would have the same problems as some overflows. Most pumps have to have water in the pipes to work. This keeps the pump primed. You would have to manually make sure there is water in the line to prime the pump. You would have to do that when you started it up & any time there was a power failure which allowed the siphon to break. This is why people drill their tanks which will keep the inlet pipe below the water line and thus keep the pump primed even when there is a power outage or the water level gets low for some other reason.
 
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