An Excuse To Spend More Money I Don't Have?

Honestly dude, the EV-180 is not enough IMO. For a 90g, I would consider the 240 or even the 400. IIWM, I would do the 400.

 

Thanks, SinCity. As for the flow rate, I mentioned the 480-2400 in my OP, so that's covered.

As for the "suddenly cold water," with my chiller, there's +/- 1 degree of variance, so that shouldn't be an issue.

If you don't mind, I'd love for you to PM me the link to the pump calculator; if it covers more than the graph on the side of the pump's box, of course.

Thanks for the info.

Yeah, John. I considered both the 240 and the 400, but to remind you; I only have 24" vertical space to the bottom glass of my tank. For this reason, I might look into the PM Bullet skimmer, as they're 150G rated Bullet One is only 20" high.

I have the future in mind here, which is why I oversized my chiller (the 1/3 HP is rated for up to a 340G tank, I have a 90G). That's why I'm kinda bummed that the limiting factor for my new proposed skimmer is going to be height.

What's a guy to do?

 

Definitely worth while! I did this with my new big system and I feel it made the world of difference. I couldn't quite get my skimmers venturi to work properly off the manifold, so that had to be driven separately, but my return, reactors, etc are all driven off of the one pump.
I also run a little giant pump. I really like it. It was a little loud for the first week, but then started running very, very quiet (my skimmer pump is louder).
No, the only thing I would suggest: spend even more money you don't have and get two pumps. Unless of course you can pick up these kind of return pumps at your LFS. We don't have an LFS here, so everything has to be ordered. If your return pump were to fail, say on a Thursday night, even trying to overnight something you could be looking at no skimmer, sump, fuge, chiller, or reactors for 4 days (could be disaster). So I bought two of the pumps, and now I always have a back-up in case the worse should happen. Just something to keep in mind.

 

I've been thinking about doing something like this also, but one thing that concerned me was what if you want to shut down one component of the system. That would cause other components to get more flow. Say for instance you want to cut flow to your skimmer. This may cause flow to your DT to increase maybe causing the DT to overfill. Or may increase the flow to your chiller or reactors.. You would have to set up a relief for the pump to let the excess flow into your sump to recirculate. This seemed too much work for me and might have become to complicated because I have limited space..

I hope I didn't confuse you. This is kinda hard to explain..

 

Nope, perfectly understandable. I had never considered that. That's why this site is great! It's a google search, phone a friend, encyclopedia, and the best "bet you didn't think about that" resource I know of!

Thanks, chuckdee.

 

That's why you have a main gate valve right after the pump before it even hits the manifold, and at least a ball valve for every operation. No reason to over think things here

 

I'll get you some pics of the new setup when I get home in a couple of days. I built 3 whole setups because with the first two didn't have the water flowing the way I thought it would. Not enough was coming out for the skimmer. After I made the last one I found the becket in my skimmer injector was probably blocking a lot of the flow.. So that was a costly and time consuming mistake.
Some mistakes I made:
1. The one above
2. I didn't even realize they made double union ball valves. I made my own homade with two unions and a ball valve in the middle .. It was twice as big as the double union I found later. Took up way too much room.
3. Get a wyes and or manifold to split the water evenly:
http://www.3reef.com/forums/filters-pumps-etc/manifold-ideas-68881.html
4. Use plenty of PVC glue. I had a couple leaks that I was able to fix. By the time I built the last one I was getting good enough to not have leaks. Use lot's of glue.

 

I actually kept a separate pump running my skimmer. Skimmers tend to prefer to let their water 'dribble' out of the top of the riser tube, so I kept that completely separate on my rig. One little giant pump, a bulkhead on my sump went through joints to pump, up through flexible hosing through my chiller, up through flexible hosing through a 3 way barb to split the flow to 2 outputs, one on the middle and one on the extreme right of my tank. The pumps that tend to run skimmers tend to generate less heat, and the complications with plumbing them into something like this many. I opted for the lesser evil

With my chiller it was also +/- 1 degree or less, but seriously, it ripped my Digitata, just make sure you don't have any corals sitting RIGHT at the outlet.

 

Good thinking!

Thanks for the link.

Thanks again.

 

Here's a pic of the first one I made:

Like I said the skimmer was clogged so I'm not really sure how well it would have worked. I thought it was the 3 way Y that was the problem. But it may have worked Ok after all. .. Guess I'll never really know lol