Looking to replace my Mag12

Hi everybody.It is always something.. First I upgrade my 90 to 125. Tank was in living room. Now my tank is in my bedroom, sweet...When tank was in living room I ran external pump Gen X 40. I knew I have to change it. It was really loud. So in my bedroom I ran Mag 12 in my sump. But it is in bedroom and you can really still hear that hmmmm sound. Nothing compere to Gen X but it is still noisy. I heard a lot of good opinions about Eheim pumps but even the bigest pushes only 900 <1262 model>. My Mag 12 <1200g/h> pushes water thru chiller. After couple elbows it is around 700 g/h. That Eheim after all that give my maybe 450. That is not enaugh.What you guys think? What should I do? Put one thru chiller and one overflow and second strait to second overflow? Please help me to set this right. Thanks.

 

Why do you think 450 is not enough? What do you hope to accomplish with more? My recommendation would be to Google skimmer dwell time and sump turnover. If you can come up with a logical explanation for why you need tons of flow through your sump, then power to you.

 

So you think 450 is enaugh? I always hear of how much water turnover reef tank should have ?< 10, 20, 30, 40, even 50> I know you includ power heads in it. I have a lot sps. They need a lot of flow. And water from sump goes thru chiller < oceanic 1/4 h.p.> so I thought flow should be decent to cool water fairly fast. But maybe I' m wrong. Please let me know. Thanks.And I;m looking for help so do not need to be sarcastic. Thanks.

 

Water screaming through the sump is just wasted electricity. You can get better circulation and turnover with some powerheads. I have an Eheim 1250 that's pumping probably 130gph after the head loss. I have a 30g so that's about 4x turnover. Then I put two Hydor's doing 425gph each. That's just over 30x turnover. And I'm FOWLR right now.

If you get a pump to do about 400-500gph I think you'd be fine (with added powerheads). This should cut down on bubbles too.

 

You should have a lot of turnover. for a mixed reef, I like around 30-40x the display volume. For an sps tank, 50-100x is probably fine. However, it dosn't need to be through your sump. In fact, it is beneficial for it not to be through the sump.

First, reason, power consumption. A return pump uses a lot of power. For say a 1200gph return pump, your looking at $10-$15 a month in electricity. For a 1200gph power head, it's more like 40 cents a month (really).

Second, is flow pattern. A power head will give a nice wide flow. While there are ways to reduce this, a return pump, tends to have way too direct a flow.

Finally, and most important is skimmer dwell time. The longer your skimmer is in contact with water, the more junk it can pull out of it. More flow through your sump, reduces dwell time and therefore reduces the efficiency of your skimmer.

There are many schools of thought on sump turnover, the first is lots of flow. The only problem, is I have yet to hear a logical explanation for why this is good. The second is 1x-5x your display volume per hour. I think the number is a bit arbitrary, but generally the idea behind this, is it gives your skimmer enough time to build up gunk and skim your water efficiently. Personally, I tend to just skip this and look at the skimmer throughput and try to have the sump throughput more or less the same. In theory slightly lower may be better, in practice I think anywhere in the ball park should be good.

Edit: reading the chiller, energy transfers through water pretty quick. It is not an issue in this case. If you run the water through the chiller faster, the individual molecules will not be in contact with the chiller as long, but more of them will contact the chiller in a given time. If you go slower, the individual molecules will have a longer contact time and cool more, but less of them will contact the chiller. If it was reeaaaaly slow, this may be an issue, but 400x or so is not really slow and the difference between 200x and 1000x would not be noticeable. If you pump lots of semi-cold molecules into the tank or a slightly less cold molecules, it dosn't matter, it all just averages out....

 

Thank you very much. Now I understand a lot more

 

Your welcome

 

heres what i did to cut noise, i have a mag 1800 pump and my tank is still very quite. that was important to me. i went to home depot and bought the thickest entrance mat to put under the sump. you know the kind you wipe your feet on that are thick rubber with looped water proof carpet. and if you want to go a bit further as i did get the cheap 3 dollar ones also rubber backed and line the side walls of the cabinet. this absorbs the sound really well.
i wanted to just hear the trickle of water. not pumps, my pump also sits on a pad in the sump. the kind you kneel on while gardening.you might want to try that first. they normally are at riteaide. or the dollar store

 

Thanks a lot. I might try that before purchase new Eheim 1262 pump. But do you guys have any opinions about thouse pumps. Are they really worth that price <169.99>. It is a lot but if they are that silent I will give it a shot:-/. Thanks. Maybe it was a bad idea to put that big tank in my bedroom.

 

I have a Eheim 1250 and love it. Quiet, not much heat. A high quality pump for sure.