making a river tank, need help with manifold

post a link

is this the setup where on one side of the tank you have the intake and on the other the outflow. So you have a continuous flow going?

Lustar makes a Hydro Sponge especially for attaching to powerheads and the intakes of various HOB filters, it comes with adapters to fit most sizes of intakes, and can easily adapt to other sizes.

Its widely available through Aquariumconnection.com and Bigalsonline.com, and probably many other places. They are also sold on the shelf at one of my LFS.

This site has some great information on making a river tank.

http://www.loaches.com/articles/my-clown-loach-aquarium

Its inspired me to make one myself....someday

Don't know about the flow or the piping, but I know big als sells blue prefilter sponges that you can cut to whatever size and shape you want. They're basically big als "brand" AquaClear sponges; They come in whatever sizes AC sponges come in, but they're a bit stiffer. You can cut them to fit over a tube fairly easily.

DooSPX said:

... I am going to use the river tank manifold design found on the loaches site.

Click to expand...

I presume that you are referencing the Martin Theorne design posted at LoachesOnLine.

DooSPX said:

... the tank is a 20L 30X12.5, ...,the current is about 2-4 mph.

Click to expand...

An average of 3 MPH = 4.4 Feet/Sec.

The width of the 20L which you reference is 13" wide.

Assuming that you have two inches of substrate the flow area is 1.13 Square Feet and therefore you will need a pumping capacity of 4.96 Cubic Feet/Second = 2229 Gallons/Minute = 133715 Gallons/Hour.

Check of CFS to GPM - 1CFS*7.48G/CF*60Sec/Min => 448.8GPM/CFS
=> 2226GPM necessary for your tank. OK

Either I have really slobbered up here (and any input as to where I might be in error would be appreciated) or your estimate of the velocity of the river is in significant error.
Please note that at a velocity 4.4FPS water will erode soil very, very quickly and at 5.0FPS a grass lined channel will begin eroding.

This $140 power head pumps all of 900GPH against zero head.

Should you somehow accomplish the installation of the powerheads necessary for 2226GPM required the 1/2" glued PVC fittings would become lethal projectiles. :lipssealedsmilie: :lipssealedsmilie: :lipssealedsmilie: :lipssealedsmilie: :lipssealedsmilie: :lipssealedsmilie::devil: :devil: :devil:


TR

Jones..this is fishkeeping not rocket science.