Where to put tank drains?
Printed From: Utah Reefs
Category: Specialized Discussion
Forum Name: DIY
Forum Description: Do it Yourself
URL: http://www.utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=24006
Printed Date: July 14 2025 at 9:33am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Where to put tank drains?
Posted By: unixnum1
Subject: Where to put tank drains?
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 11:12am
I just bought a new 220G tank that isn't drilled. I am so excited!!!!!However, I want to drill it on the back side, near the top, for the drain and return lines. My question is, how far below the surface should the drain lines be located for optimal draining? Tank sketch: http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2157355770102921873ttrRCL">  Any ideas would be very helpful. Thanks, Kevin ------------- 220G with 30G sump, SPS/LPS. RoboTank Controller. ===================================== why am I always the stem? 
|
Replies:
Posted By: TriggerHappy
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 12:37pm
|
What did Eric suggest? He would be the one to talk to I think.
------------- 210 gallon Mixed Reef |
Posted By: unixnum1
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 12:39pm
|
I haven't asked him yet but I thought I would query the knowledgeable board first.
------------- 220G with 30G sump, SPS/LPS. RoboTank Controller. ===================================== why am I always the stem?
|
Posted By: TriggerHappy
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 12:43pm
|
Well, I know that some would disagree, but the 90 I bought ha two holes drilled in the bottom for drain/return. The drain uses a Durso type system. I really like it, but as some have pointed out it will be a real b**ch if the bulkheads ever leak!
------------- 210 gallon Mixed Reef |
Posted By: unixnum1
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 12:53pm
|
I like the ability of working on the drains while only partially draining the tank. It will also give me more room for stuff in the main tank. I have had problems lately on my current bulhead leaking so I may need to drain it and repair it. However, I will now wait until the new tank is ready before I drain it. My daughter wants my current 55G for her tank. ------------- 220G with 30G sump, SPS/LPS. RoboTank Controller. ===================================== why am I always the stem?
|
Posted By: TriggerHappy
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 12:58pm
Cool on the 55...how old is your daughter? My 10 year old son is starting to get the saltwater itch! 
------------- 210 gallon Mixed Reef |
Posted By: unixnum1
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 1:06pm
|
She just turned 20 and was just married. She has a small fresh water tank but wants to switch to salt water. ------------- 220G with 30G sump, SPS/LPS. RoboTank Controller. ===================================== why am I always the stem?
|
Posted By: sukie
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 1:10pm
| Are you using an overflow box? |
Posted By: unixnum1
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 1:17pm
|
I currently have a full height overflow box inside my 55. I want to go to a small overflow around the durso intake on the 220. ------------- 220G with 30G sump, SPS/LPS. RoboTank Controller. ===================================== why am I always the stem?
|
Posted By: sukie
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 1:46pm
|
Maybe I'm missing something here. . . But if you have bulkheads installed with an overflow box - then if the bulks heads were ever to leak can't you turn off the return pump - let the overflow drain and then take out the leaky bulks heads and replace them? Sure it would be a chore. . . I would have Eric drill the bulkheads and do an overflow box for the tank. |
Posted By: superman1981
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 2:29pm
|
I beat you all, my 7 week old boy has his own 6 gal nano! Go SuperBaby!!!
------------- Sure you are, you are Crappy Reef Club Member #1 -Chk4tix 6 gal nanocube 65 gal http://www.utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=78639&title=tims-65-gallon-build" rel="nofollow - build thread |
Posted By: unixnum1
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 2:33pm
|
Wow! I am really impressed that he can maintain it already. You must be feeding him supermilk for the superbaby.  ------------- 220G with 30G sump, SPS/LPS. RoboTank Controller. ===================================== why am I always the stem?
|
Posted By: jfinch
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 3:06pm
|
Kevin, I drilled my tank in the back about 2-3 inches below the water level then used small overflow boxes for each of the drains. The boxes also utilized a durso style drain. IME, ~2" of water fall is optimum. That allows enough room for flow disturbances and it doesn't fall so far that it's noisy. ------------- Jon https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y_EzjI_ljbIwf2n5uNzTw" rel="nofollow - What I've been doing... |
Posted By: larhalli
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 3:21pm
|
I agree with Jon, I have a similar setup. Take in to consideration that with out the durso type style drain you may not get enough air into the drain and it may cause gurgling noises. The concern may also be how much room you have for the plumbing inside your box between your bulkheads and the overflow boxes inside your tank. If you are having your boxes made take that into consideration. You can accomplish the durso by putting a tee instead of an elbow on the outside drainpipe of your tank drawing.
------------- Larry Halliday West Jordan |
Posted By: unixnum1
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 3:29pm
|
Thanks, the plan is to put a tee just past the bulkhead, I just didn't draw it. I want to make a rock wall on the back of the tank and have the overflows hid by the rock wall. Do I want to use 1", or 1.5" for the durso pipe? ------------- 220G with 30G sump, SPS/LPS. RoboTank Controller. ===================================== why am I always the stem?
|
Posted By: jfinch
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 3:44pm
Here's what mine looked like:
   ------------- Jon https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y_EzjI_ljbIwf2n5uNzTw" rel="nofollow - What I've been doing... |
Posted By: unixnum1
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 3:48pm
|
Is that 1" pipe?
------------- 220G with 30G sump, SPS/LPS. RoboTank Controller. ===================================== why am I always the stem?
|
Posted By: larhalli
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 4:16pm
|
I would go with one inch pipe. My boxes had baffles cut in all around the top edge. When the power is cut to the drain I loose water in the tank only to the baffles, about one inch.
------------- Larry Halliday West Jordan |
Posted By: jfinch
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 5:24pm
|
Yup, 1". ------------- Jon https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y_EzjI_ljbIwf2n5uNzTw" rel="nofollow - What I've been doing... |
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 7:49pm
| I have 1-1/2" pipes using the same thing that Jon did on my new tank. Street ells, and I'm clamping my bulkheads to the back just like Jon. |
Posted By: bbeck4x4
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 8:10pm
|
with 1" drains and 200-400 gph my drains are nearly silent, if you go with more flow through your sump than than I would recommend 1 1/2. |
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: February 25 2008 at 10:59pm
I just measured as I don't have my tank plans at the moment- 2-1/2" below the brace, 3" below the top of the tank. In other words, the brace is 1/2" glass, and the hole is 3" from the top of the brace to centerline. That would be very similar to the way Jon did his- great minds think alike 
My hole diameter is 2-1/2" for a 1-1/2" bulkhead. I'm doing the same external durso return with a tee on the outside. I found the street ell at www.savko.com. My box dimensions are 4-1/2" by 9" by 6-1/2", but may need to be adjusted. I will probably be doing it similar to what Jon did- no teeth. I figure that the drain will handle at least 900 gph and be very silent, but I don't expect to run more than 600 gph through it. I figure that the bigger the drains, the more redundant they will be. I tried to upload a 2-D picture from Google Sketchup, but I keep getting an error. I will upload a picture when I am able. My overflows will be removable- the bulkhead will be the clamp and the perimeter brace will prevent it from rolling. |
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: February 26 2008 at 9:16pm
|
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: February 26 2008 at 9:17pm
| There we go. |
Posted By: Mike Savage
Date Posted: February 26 2008 at 10:06pm
|
That looks good Corey. I may have to do my next tank like that.
Mike -------------  |
Posted By: larhalli
Date Posted: February 27 2008 at 11:03am
|
Corey's drawing is just what I was talking about and how one of my tanks is set up.
------------- Larry Halliday West Jordan |
Posted By: chris.rogers
Date Posted: February 27 2008 at 2:19pm
Corey, PM me with how you did the teeth in Sketchup, please.  ------------- Ils sont fous, ces Romains! |
Posted By: EagleEyez5
Date Posted: February 28 2008 at 11:56am
Boy if you think those teeth are hard to draw, try cutting them into acrylic......
For me personally, I didn't want to see an overflow box in the tank, so I just used a 90 degree elbow on the inside of the tank....this also allows you to easily adjust the height of the water.......but as I have learned from experience, put a screen of some sort over the hole, snails like to climb in if you don't...... the only problems I have had are due to the fact that I had to close one of my overflows because one of my sumps leaked.....by only having the one overflow, I was pron to having a snail climb inside......this is easy to avoid by just adding a screen of some sort......also by doing it this way, you can drill your holes higher and out of the line of site...... ------------- http://www.highendcorals.com/"> 
WMAS PAID SPONSOR |
chris.rogers wrote:Posted By: EagleEyez5
Date Posted: February 28 2008 at 11:58am
I am glad to hear this......but don't you think that 10 years old is a little too young to have to get a full time job ------------- http://www.highendcorals.com/">
WMAS PAID SPONSOR |
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: February 28 2008 at 12:59pm
|
Chris,
Just draw a 1/4" circle about 1" from the top of the rectangle to have teeth. Then draw lines vertical from the edges. Draw a line that bisects the circle at its midpoint and connects the two lines. Erase the half circle on top and the line that bisected the circle, and then just extrude it out.
Jerry,
I like the box idea, with teeth or without teeth & covered with eggcrate like Jon's. I personally use the elbow method on my 40g and hate it since it doesn't have a long linear wier- just the circumference of the elbow opening. Longer wiers with less water flowing over them skims the surface better, IMHO.
|
Posted By: EagleEyez5
Date Posted: February 28 2008 at 3:01pm
still sounds easier than cutting them...... I understand what you are saying for surface skimming, so on my 6 foot long tank, I used one overflow in each corner. Then for the sump returns I have them pointed tward the surface, and this seems to have helped with keeping the surface turning over.......{Oh and the 4000 gph of water movement doesn't hurt either.....} ------------- http://www.highendcorals.com/">
WMAS PAID SPONSOR |
Posted By: TNaisbitt
Date Posted: February 28 2008 at 3:07pm
|
Corey, Your new tank is 225 gal. right? If you run 600 gph through each overflow that will be 1200 gph of turnover. Is that enough for a 225? I had always heard the 10x rule of thumb, but I know that some people count their closed loop as part of that 10x turnover? Is that what you are doing too? ------------- "Water which is too pure has no fish." 90 Gal Reef, 12Gal Nano Reef West Jordan, UT |
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: February 28 2008 at 9:26pm
|
I don't know if it really matters, Travis. There's many ways of doing a sump. Some designs work okay, some work great, and I'm sure some don't work at all.
Turnover is overrated- just like watts per gallon of light- not real good indicators. I can show you a tank design that has a small "turnover" with a closed loop and return, but has really good flow. |
Posted By: TNaisbitt
Date Posted: February 28 2008 at 9:53pm
I totally agree, I just didn't want to be out on that island by myself... I was on RC using one of the calculators and it told me for my tank I would need 22" of overflow for a 10x turnover. Crazy!
I really like yours and Jon's overflow idea. I'll probably work that into the new tank at some point too. ------------- "Water which is too pure has no fish." 90 Gal Reef, 12Gal Nano Reef West Jordan, UT |
Posted By: EagleEyez5
Date Posted: February 29 2008 at 12:03am
|
as far as a refugium and sump, I have read and heard that 600 gph is ideal for the plants and bacteria in rocks to draw nutrients from the water......so I have kept this as a guide line for the flow coming from the sump.....then for more flow I have done a closed loop with spray bars. I then added other powerheads such as koralia's for more flow......If I were to do my tank over, I would put in a second closed loop and instead of drilling the drain for the closed loop as a 1 1/2 inch bulkhead, I would do two drains with 2 inche bulkheads in each.....then the returns on the closed loops would be two 1 inch returns for each loop......or I would do one closed loop just for the spray bars, and the other closed loop that comes back in the bottom corners, then it goes under the sand in pvc and has nipples sticking out of the sand spraying behind the rocks....I did it this way on my current setup, but only did one closed loop pump to run it all..... ------------- http://www.highendcorals.com/">
WMAS PAID SPONSOR |
Posted By: kgross
Date Posted: April 09 2008 at 12:13am
|
Those one piece units sure are easy to install, but you don't get very good surface skimming out them, you just don't have enough linear overflow distance for really good surface skimming. When ever possible, I all ways suggest going with a coast to coast or Calfo style overflow. Plus if you put 2 drains in the overflow you can run one at a full siphon to make it silent, and then have the second drain as a backup for the first. You will have no gurgling at all, just the noise of the water moving. Kim |
Posted By: kgross
Date Posted: April 09 2008 at 12:18am
|
Tnaisbitt. The best flow rate to flow over your overflow, is equal to the flow rate of your skimmer. The main reason for the overflow is to concentrate the surfactants to bring them to your skimmer. If you have a higher flow rate through the sump than your skimmer has, you will be surface skimming and concentrating the surfactants, and then just mixing them back into the bulk water and pumping them back into the main tank to start over. What you should do, is setup your sump so that the overflow water goes to the skimmer and then from the outlet of the skimmer it goes on to the rest of the sump. that way 100% of the water from the overflow gets skimmed, and non of it misses the skimmer, or the freshly skimmed water is not feed back into the skimmer to be skimmed again. Kim |
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: April 09 2008 at 12:20am
|
Kim,
Sorry, but I've done the full-siphon and backup drain thing before. I didn't like it since I had to constantly adjust the gate valve for the levels in the overflows. What a pain, and then you get something in there- even more of a pain. Plus, it all depends upon the amount of flow going over the weir for surface skimming- if you're only pushing 600 gph through the system, then a toothless overflow that is 26" long will do great, IMHO. Calfo-style coast-to-coast overflows are nice, but take up a lot of room unless you have the tank made with an external overflow. |
Posted By: kgross
Date Posted: April 09 2008 at 12:25am
|
I'm not sure what was going on with your full siphon setup, but I haven't had to adjust mine in about 6 months. The backup drain is setup as a durso and with the very slow flow rate through it, it makes no noise either. yes a 26 long overflow will handle 600 gph pretty well, but the boxes that I saw posted earlier in this thread had a lot less than 26 inches of overflow on them. And the space of the Coast to coast can be a problem, but in my opinion if they are made small (most of mine only stick out into the tank 3 inches and are 4 inches deep), it is not a very big deal, and are easier to work with than a standard RR tank's overflow, and look a lot better than a box just hanging out in the back of the tank. Kim |
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: April 09 2008 at 12:32am
|
Kim,
If you read my post, my overflows are toothless (now) and are 9x4, which means 34" linear since I have two boxes. If I were to do a coast-to-coast, it would be 54" long and be just as deep as my present boxes- not what I wanted at all. To each his own, right? |
Posted By: kgross
Date Posted: April 09 2008 at 12:39am
|
Yes Corey I read your post. I would agree that toothless is the best way for any overflows, but my math and yours does not work out if the box is 9x4 you would have 4+4+9 or 17 inches in one box, and if you have to boxes you would have 34 inches. I don't understand how you get 26 inches. I am just one that believes if you want to spend money on a skimmer you should do what you can to maximize the skimmer through the whole system. The thinner the layer of water you pull off the more concentrated the surfactants are. So if 26 inches gives you good surface skimmer 52 would give you almost twice as effective surface skimming, instead of pulling the top 3/16 of the water over the overflow you would be pulling the top 3/32 to 1/8 inch and then you could make sure your water movement in the tank is moving the water in that tank rather than on the surface. Kim |
Posted By: Corey Price
Date Posted: April 09 2008 at 12:51am
|
Late-night math gets me every time- sorry about that. I don't think the water height over a weir matters after you get to a certain point- 1/8" to 3/16" isn't much of a difference in my mind- seems asymptotic. One thing I noticed with my 3000 gph through-put was that the surface never really got skimmed- the valved drains interrupted it. Small bits of flake food were just floating around on the surface in the overflow. Maybe less flow would help, but I think a durso overflow may still not help.
|
Posted By: kgross
Date Posted: April 09 2008 at 9:47am
|
For the noise the durso would have solved most of the problems (as long as the siphon drain could keep up with most of the flow. When you start trying to move that much water over any normal overflow/drain setup you have problems. That is one of the reasons I suggest going with a much slower flow through the sump system. Now when you say the surface skimming was not working, was that in the tank, or just the overflow? If it is just in the overflow box, it sounds like you had the water level 2 high in the box to get the stuff to get sucked down the drain, which is pretty easy to do with a high flow setup. When it comes to optimizing the surface skimming the height of the water over the weir is important. 1/8 to 3/16 is quite a bit more bulk water verses, surfactant heavy water. But again, this assumes you are doing the surface skimming to concentrate the surfactants so they can be removed by the skimmer. If you are not trying to maximize your skimming, I would agree with you that there is not enough difference between 1/8 and 3/16 to matter. If you are just trying to mix the surfactants back into the bulk water so you don't have to see them, the amount of water going over the weir should be a high flow rate, rather than a low flow rate. But again, the whole sump flow rate setup and your overflow setup is determined by what you want the sump system to do. Myself I think that protein skimming is very important and I think we should do what we can to optimize the skimming, rather than to design a system and then just through a skimmer into it and hope it works well. Kim |