How much flow does a sump need?

I tryed making a sump months ago, drilled the tanks and plumbed everything, all I ended up doing was making a big mess. Anyway I just bought 2 maxijet 1200's 1 running the feed line one running the return. Turns out I have to throttle the feed way down to keep up with the return, I figure it's doing about 50 gph im not sure. My sump will be about 15 gallons, will the feed flow be enough for chaeto and all the good stuff? If not could I add a powerhead or something like that?

 

It is almost impossible to run a sump as I think you are saying. There is no way to really match a feed pump with a return pump, and throttling back one vs. the other will just degrade the pump life. Ideal turn over rate for a sump is whatever your skimmer can process, and no more. If you are running it simply as a refugium, it can be a wide range, but I would say 5x the sump volume per hour.

The return is much slower due to the head height. I am guessing its around 4ft, significantly lowering the GPH on that pump.

 

thanks for the advice I will get pics up later to show you how it works

 

Sounds good. What is the head height your running that MJ1200 @? At only 295gph @ 1', 50gph is a pretty steep decline in pressure.