Flow rate and GPH

[redwinger]

I was wondering what a good flow rate is. I am looking into building a closed loop system and trying to decide on the pump to run. I have used the head loss calc on RC but I am wondering is how many GPH should I need for a 44 gal tank?

[mnreefgeek]

You really don't need to be concerned with pump head loss for a closed loop. Depending on what you want to keep in the tank, I think that a good place to start would be in the neighborhood of a 10x turn over. The more the better in most cases.

[Jive Turkey]

Don't be afraid to go higher than that, these corals are used to much more flow than most of us produce. If you have a decent amount of outlets of the closed loop, you can go alot higher. I think 20-40x for softies and LPS, and 60-80x for SPS are about right.
From my experience, my priorities for success with coral have become: #1-clean water, #2-strong flow(80x) and #3-good MH lighting, in that order.

Look into Ampmaster and Sequence pumps if you haven't made your mind up. Cool, quiet and economical.

[trodder]

I have a 58 gallon with a total of 1600gph total flow. I still need more. I hopoe that gives you an indication. I could get by with what I have but I could definately use more.

[David Grigor]

With SPS the more you can give the better. However the type of flow plays a part too. Concentrated type flow coming from say a powerhead, if corals are too close the type of flow can rip the flesh off.

If mostly going to be LPS/softies, I think random flow is just as important as the flow itself.

If your drilling the tank for the closed loop where the input and output never go above the water line then you basically just pushing water and there is little to no headloss. It's when you pump water above the water line where headloss starts to become a factor. Also, everything plumbed below the waterline the pump will use the least amount of energy too....