How do I determine the true volume in my tank?

Yea...I hear that a lot on forums--don't reurn more than your skimmer can handle. To me it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that unless your sump is somehow in-line, all of the water passing through your sump is not being skimmed anyway. I do know one guy who mounts his skimmer in an acrylic box inside his sump. All overflow water drains into the acrylic box and then the skimmer pours water into the sump. Unless you are running a really big skimmer (with a massive pump--I run a Mag-18 on my EV, and it would need to be bigger than that!), you are probably not going to match the desired flow rate for a reef tank. Right?

 

Well this gets close to the water I am returning but I don't have a 5,300g tank and I sure in the heck don't have $16,969.00 to spend on it either.:-/

 

lol...I hear ya. I think the argument would go something like: Run less flow through your skimmer by getting a return pump and skimmer that would run 10x your system volume per hour. Then create the othe 30x GPH flow with a CLS. This makes sense if you have a sump-based refugium, but otherwise, I don't see that returning both skimmed and unskimmed water to the display tank is that detrimental to the health of the system. I certainly don't think it's worth 17k...lol.

 

Geeze otty i'm kinda dissappointed... I thought you were a high roller!!! 17k, I spent that on breakfast this morning!!

LOL I'm not looking forward to buying my mh's in the next month or so!!!

 

I thought that was a very good response. You know, teach a guy to fish and all.

Oh well. I appreciated it, Camilsky!

 

Thanks a lot sparky! We are here to educate! Knowledge is for free! Why not to use it?! I give hint, and somebody else passes some useful knowledge on me!

 

I would still need to know the temperature of the pool to answer your question.