[Ghazanfar Ghori]

I got a 215G Oceanic reef ready tank in a couple of weeks ago. Planning
on setting it up as a medium light, low maint planted tank(ofcourse).
Dimensions 6 ft long x 2ft wide x 29" tall

Automated water changes - already decided how I'm going to get
that done.

I'm thinking about using an Eheim 2260 as the primary filter.
Originally I was thinking about hooking up an external CO2 reactor
to the Eheim. However, I've done a little more thinking. I want
really good circulation in this tank - so here's what my plan is...

Hook up the Ehiem the regular way - nothing too special - may remove
the spray bar and have the water just return as a jet.

Add an external pump - hooked up to an external CO2 reactor.
Then at the bottom of the tank - below the substrate - setup a
1/4" PVC circuit like so...

Top View
OxxxxOxxxxO
x x x
OxxxxOxxxxO

where the O marks outputs. Ball&Socket hosing with jet-type nozzles
attached at these points would allow me to provide CO2 enriched water
to all parts of the tank while providing good circulation so that most detrius
gets picked up into the water column and filtered out.

I can hide the nozzles behind plants / rocks / wood so that you'd never
see them from the front.

What do you think? Any problems you foresee with doing it this way?
Any better ways of doing this?

I'm thinking about something that pumps about 1200 GPH.
Pump will be located below the tank - so I've got to account for
about 3-4 feet of head. I need this pump to be QUIET!

What pump should I use?

 

[MiamiAG]

For quiet pumps, you can't beat the Poseidon T4. It does about that amount of gph. It does add heat to the water though.

 

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

Google doesn't find much on this. Any links?

 

[gnatster]

Poseidon T4

 

[niko]

Ghazanfar,

I used to have a spray bar that was as long as the tank and laid on the bottom touching the back glass with the jets pointed forward. My idea was that the jets would push all debries to the front of the tank where I could easily syphon them out. The pump that I used produced a flow of about 2-1/2 the tank volume. That resulted in virtually all debries being pushed about 2 inches from the spray bar but not further. The tank was extremely densely planted though.

You have probably seen the following but here it is again - Undergravel Jets

Another idea is to use a lawn sprinkler part made by Toro that you can find (in some) Lowe's stores. It looks like a disk about 2 inches in diameter and accepts 1/2" pipe on one side and has 6 or 8 angled jets (looking like small barbs) that can be moved in any direction. Each jet has a shut off valve. You can attach tubing to each jet and run it anywhere in the tank you want. The drawback is that the jets are made to accept 1/8" hose.

I do believe that you will actually not have that big of a problem with debries because the tank is lower light.

Something that I'd make sure to do is to supply bacteria for the substrate right from the start. I say that because I have a 30 gal. cube that is about 1 to 1-1/2 wpg (depending on the trimming) that never needs any syphoning or cleaning of the glass. I've moved the tank 3 times in the last 8 months and it never has problems, even when I let it evaporate to 2/3 of the volume . I believe that that is so because I keep the gravel (100% blasting sand) submersed during the moving.

Good luck with your new monster tank!

--Nikolay

 

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

..resulted in virtually all debries being pushed about 2 inches from the spray bar but not further. The tank was extremely densely planted though.

You have probably seen the following but here it is again - Undergravel Jets

Holy cow! The article in the link - that's almost exactly what
I was thinking about doing! Thanks for the link.

My main purpose for the jets would be to provide CO2 enriched
water to all part of the tank - maybe also keep the front as detrius
free as possible. Looks like its very doable.

 

[bharada]

Isn't the undergravel jets the same principle as doing a reverse flow UGF?

 

[Ghazanfar Ghori]

Not really. With the RUGF, water flows through the gravel. With
the jets, there is no flow of water through the gravel- the PVC
pipes just hide in it - outputs are above the substrate level.

 

[SCMurphy]

Do you want to try my pump/reactor sytem thats on the 56? It's set up for dissolving CO2 and since I used a union connector we can modify the output and see if the flow will work the way you want it to. The pump is an Iwaki MD40RLXT which does something like 1200 gph at 5 feet of head.