New Skimmer

You are already talking lots of pump with equals lots of heat and lots of power. AquaCs are good but need lots of pump. Try to rethink your pump and skimmer strategy. You can just use one return pump and put it through your chiller or just some. Not sure you need a chiller, but with all those pumps you certainly will.

Needle wheel skimmers use very little power and add very little heat. They are much less finicky too.

 

here is a photo of it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5728038/sumppicture.JPG

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5728038/nexttosump.JPG

 

Powerman. thanks for the notes. For the skimmer, one needle wheel that may fit my needs is a coralife 220

http://www.oceanicsystems.com/products/coralife-super-skimmer.php

Any thoughts on the coralife?

you are right, I may not need a chiller. I am trying to think ahead just in case. What raised the question on a chiller is last week there was a day it got up to 85 degrees outside and we did not have the AC on. during the day, the tank went up to 82.5 degrees. so I am looking at the options.

I was looking at a TECO chiller T20 and emailed them., The rep said I can do a closed loop with a pump in the sump or an inline and put a TEE after the discharge of the main 40 HD-X pump. Not sure how that setup will be, but I would need to turn the flow down going to the TECO chiller (the rep said it is too much flow for the chiller). He also said that could put added stress on the pump as well as decrease flow into the tank so he recommends the closed loop system with a separate Mag 5 or 7 pump in the sump.

 

No too up on Coralife. About the best bang for the buck is Vertex. In 250 would be good. Buble Magus is another, but not sure about a 150g. For the best balance between cost and quality and build, there is no reason to look beyond SWC of Super Reef Octopus. An SWC Extreme 200 would do you and is just under $300. A sicce pump only pulls 21 watts.

You are on the right track with chillers. You have to look at flow. A chiller can only take so much and usually not as much as most put out by their return. I would just get one pump big enough to do the return duties and supply the chiller. Tee off to the chiller and discharge it back to the sump. Also, there is no problem what so ever throttling pumps. but there is no reason to buy a pump twice as big as you need and throttle it 50%.

For flow through the sump... 4-5 times the tank volume is fine. All you are doing is supplying the skimmer. So you are only looking at 750gph, plus another 300-400 for chillers. 1100-1200 gph for a return. That is a Mag12... or something similar. Don't know specs on the BL 40, but of course you have to account for head too.