GPH - - Understanding GPH Flow Rate

P roper water flow and water movement in a wall aquarium are essential. By using these 7 simple steps you can determine the actual GPH output you are getting from our equipment, as well as find out how many times per hour your wall aquarium's water is being cycled.

Tip: In order to have a healthy wall aquarium the turn over ratio must be good. A turn over ratio of 6 to 10 times per hour is what most professional aquarists strive for but “more” is always better.

Step 1 G et a one gallon container. Be sure it is clean and sterile if you are going to put the water back into your wall aquarium.

Step 2 Determine Wall Aquarium's Water Volume. The 7 ft model is 30 gallons and the 4 ft is 20 gallons, but this is water volume for an empty wall aquarium. The actual water volume in the 7 ft model is 26 gallons ; the 4 ft model is 17 gallons. The substrate, gravel, rock, decorations and components lessen the amount of actual water volume.

Step 3 Unplug the power filter y ou want to test. For the test on our power filters we attached an eight inch piece of clear, soft tubing the same diameter as the outflow nozzle to direct the water into the one gallon container.

Step 4 T o determine gallons per second, plug in the power filter and time how long it takes to fill the one gallon container. Unplug the power filter when the container is full. It took 13.7 seconds to fill our one gallon container. Make a note of the time.

Tip: It's much easier for 2 people to perform this task.

Step 5 Determine Gallons Per Minute. T ake the time in seconds it took to fill the one gallon container and divide that into 60 seconds to get the number of gallons the power filter pumped per minute.

• O ur power filter example: 60 seconds divided by 13.7 seconds = 4.38 gallons per minute.

Step 6 Determine Gallons Per Hour (GPH). N ow multiply the number of gallons per minute by 60 minutes and you get the number of gallons per hour pumped.

• O ur power filter example: 60 minutes multiplied by 4.38 gallons = 263 GPH (gallons per hour). **Note the 7 ft model utilizes 2 power filters. This gives us a rating of 526 GPH

Step 7 Determine How Many Times Per Hour the Wall Aquarium's Water Volume is Turned Over

D ivide the number of gallons per hour by the actual gallons of the wall aquarium's water volume you got from Step 2.

• O ur power filter example on the 7 ft model: 526 GPH (gallons per hour) divided by 26 gallons = 20.2 This is the number of times our wall aquarium's water passes through the power filters.
• Our power filter example on the 4 ft model: 263 GPH dived by 17 gallons = 15.5 This is the number of times our wall aquarium's water passes through the power filters.