Using water bridges to connect tanks

[Progen]

So now that my Three Kingdoms are slowly coming to reality, I'm also faced with the dilemma of using water bridges to connect them so that I can share one large chiller and less filters than tanks.

I've tried with your usual 19/22mm hose and it'd worked but the transfer was pretty slow and even at a measly few hundred lph, the tank being filled would overflow within minutes.

Now the hose wasn't going to be the actual bridge. What I had in mind was a 100 - 120mm ID acrylic tube but before I rush out to buy, cut and bend that, would a much larger conduit help because what I'm planning to do is to have a canister filter take water from the centre tank and its outflow connected to a Y splitter to send water to the tanks on the left and right with the water bridge bringing them back to the centre one.

Would a 100mm - 120mm tube be able to transfer 700 - 800 lph on siphon power alone?

 

[Zeus.]

Never done one but would of thought 100-120mm should handle a few hundred l/h easy.

Sent from Mountolympus via neural interface

 

[zozo]

I use 110mm PVC pipe as water bridge to connect 3 seperate 100 litre tubs. What is key to this kind of setup is the law of communicating vessels. For example if you have 3 tanks, than you should use a pump sucking water from tank 1 pumping it into tank 3. The law of commucating vesels keeps the water level in all 3 tanks the same, so you create a flow from tank 3 to tank 1. It functions as one and the same water column as long as the pump is running and the tubes are vacuum.

With 110mm pipe, you need a monster of a pump the influence waterlevel on that.5

 

[Progen]

Thanks Zozo. I guess I'll go buy the acrylic tube then. I've already bought an airhose coil like the one below to fit into the acrylic tube to prevent it from collapsing during the bending.

 

[Progen]

Anyway, it finally dawned upon me that the reason why the water wasn't going through the hose fast enough was because the 3 tanks were at the same level. I have 6 plastic pallets. Should have placed them 3 high, 2 high and 1 high to create a 6" difference in height between them.