Let me preface this with an admission to being a newb. I'm an open minded newb, though, so I know that nothing I state is "fact," and I take criticism very well .

I currently have a 20g freshwater tank. I'm planning to spend the next year learning as much as I can with the goal of moving to a reef tank in the neighborhood of 100g.

The struggle I'm having at the moment is setting up a good flow rate for a scrubber in my current tank. The recommendations seem to be for shorter/wider screens and that's driving fairly high flow rates. My tank is populated by mostly very small fish, 1" length range. I don't know how they'll react to turning over the tank volume 8-12 times an hour. Can some of you more experienced folks chime in?

Is it an option to run a lower flow rate to/from a sump and then run the higher rate within the sump circuit back through the scrubber? In other words, I could put 2 pumps in a sump. One supplies the overflow on my tank at a rate, say, of 80gph. The 2nd pump supplies the scrubber at 200-250gph and the scrubber drains back to the sump. I know that would get the flow rates where I want them, but would that provide adequate nutrition for the screen?

Eric