Plumbing for stacked system

[icemountain]

I needed some help doing the plumbing for this system. I have a total of 3 tiers. Bottom will be the sump/storage area. Tanks are drilled for a 1.5” bulkhead but was I planning on reducing that to a 1”.

what would be the most effective way to plumb all of this in series? I was originally thinking of draining each tank to a mainline that dumps into the sump and the then gave the return go to each of the tanks. One is my friends told me it would be better to only do the returns to the top tanks and have the top tanks drain into the bottom tanks and then the bottom tanks drain into the sump.

A couple more tanks will be going in to fill the top space.

 

[dmsc2fs]

I have a pair of 50G frag tanks stacked. Either way will work. They way I did it was pump in sump to top tank. Overflow to middle tank, overflow back to sump. With a bunch of 10-15G tanks, you may struggle getting water into every tank across the stacks. Are you planning on a manifold behind each? i.e. overflow from top tanks into a manifold behind the mid stack that returns to those tanks?

I'm not confident you could every get the plumbing quite across 8 tanks but it looks like it is a garage so maybe not an issue.

 

[icemountain]

I have a pair of 50G frag tanks stacked. Either way will work. They way I did it was pump in sump to top tank. Overflow to middle tank, overflow back to sump. With a bunch of 10-15G tanks, you may struggle getting water into every tank across the stacks. Are you planning on a manifold behind each? i.e. overflow from top tanks into a manifold behind the mid stack that returns to those tanks?

I'm not confident you could every get the plumbing quite across 8 tanks but it looks like it is a garage so maybe not an issue.

Yes I was going to have a manifold behind each set of tanks for the drain as well as for the return if I was going to do a return to each tank instead of just the top tanks.

Another question I had was what size should the return be compared to the drain?

 

[bblumberg]

I needed some help doing the plumbing for this system. I have a total of 3 tiers. Bottom will be the sump/storage area. Tanks are drilled for a 1.5” bulkhead but was I planning on reducing that to a 1”.

what would be the most effective way to plumb all of this in series? I was originally thinking of draining each tank to a mainline that dumps into the sump and the then gave the return go to each of the tanks. One is my friends told me it would be better to only do the returns to the top tanks and have the top tanks drain into the bottom tanks and then the bottom tanks drain into the sump.

A couple more tanks will be going in to fill the top space.

View attachment 3129825

If you plumb with return only to the top tank, then there is no easy option to isolate one tank from the others, should you want to do that in the future. If you have the returns go to each tank, you can always just turn off the one to the tank you wish to isolate.

I have 1.5" drain manifold with 1" drains in the tanks. The supply manifold is 1"

 

[icemountain]

If you plumb with return only to the top tank, then there is no easy option to isolate one tank from the others, should you want to do that in the future. If you have the returns go to each tank, you can always just turn off the one to the tank you wish to isolate.

I have 1.5" drain manifold with 1" drains in the tanks. The supply manifold is 1"

Do you have a picture that I can see?

 

[bblumberg]

Here you go. These were ~44 gallon tanks I repurposed from discarded water reservoirs. They had hole for a 3/4" bulkhead and 2 holes for 1" bulkheads. I decided to use the 3/4" for returns and the 2 1" for drains. The main drains have a flat Lifeguard aquatic screen screwed into 1" thread. The emergency drains are just open and at the highest level I want the water. The system has a 40 g sump and is supplied by a Fluval sp6 pump and a 1/5 hp chiller (since it is in a garage that gets hot. The system has 3 tanks but one is off line because I don't need it at the moment. Live rock is in the sump along with a skimmer.