Closed Loop Spraybar Thoughts??

[phiberop840]

Well here are some pictures of my spray bar That I think I am going to install. I have joined the 2 middle outputs, do you think that I should join the other 2 as well by the overflows?? Let me know your thoughts. Not sure if I should just keep them separate. The plumbing has a manifold and a line to each BH.

Mike

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[tims]

mike,
i thnk you can just connect the whole thing. take a look at mototslaves CLS , your is almost 99% the same. i would suggest raising it up off the tank bottom.
can you do a a wet run with what you have now?

[Loverotties]

Looks nice(I'd do it in the black next time,but enougher net trick is to coat the pipe with the purple primer so it blend in and look like Coraline algea.

[Geoff]

what kind of pump are you going to run on that? the higher pressure capable the pump the better. i would want at least 2000gph going through that thing. even more if possible. you will be getting into the Iwaki 100 range pretty quickly though.

G~

[Dagrape]

Looks good but make sure you got a BIG pump. My spray bars are about 18" long each and both are run off of a LG4 MDQX which puts out 1325GPH. Flow from the spray bars is not bad but no where near as good as I had hoped.

[phiberop840]

I am a little worried about my hammerhead being able to keep up.

Mike

[Geoff]

what size is the spraybar piping? the Hammerhead has a decent chance of making a go at it. what size are the holes in the spraybar? you might want to make them quite large to help the pump out. if the spraybar is 1.5" all around then you will maintain great flow through the spraybar and the Hammerhead will do fine. if you went with 1" pipe you will be loosing a lot of flow at the pipe reduction areas. with 23' of head on the Hammerhead you still may be fine, but if the flow out of the spraybars is not what you want then the pipe size is the problem.

on my tank i have a 1.5" CLS outlet pushing about 1800gph pointing straight down. this does a fantastic job of pushing all detritus out from under the LR. i do have a BB tank though. if this is going to be a BB tank then i would not do a true spraybar. i would use nozzles/pipe fittings spaced out pointing down to the tank bottom.

if you wanted a sand bottom you could do what Matt_b did in his tank. he created a plateau of HDPE in which he placed all of his LR on, and sand all around that. that way the spraybar is clearing all of the detritus without messing up all of the sand under the LR and undermining it.

G~

[phiberop840]

Excellent ideas. Thank you all for chiming in on this. I have a very different setup and will discuss this in my build thread soon. I have constructed a manifold of 8 1/2 inch outlets for the CLS and tonight was the real test.....it was awesome. My spray-bars are EXCELLENT with a ton of flow that is completely controllable. This design of CLS I have created is unbelievable. I also ripped out all the Hard plumbing and went straight up Flex, removing 3 90's from the CLS intake and output areas and WOW, what a difference. This Hammerhead is QUIET and pushing water like you wouldn't believe. Sorry I am excited. Today was a major breakthrough!!! I am beat and will post a serious update thread on my build thread with detailed pictures of all.

Thanks
Mike

[Sndwave80]

Nice design!

[phiberop840]

Thank you much. I have to say that this is a very functional system at this point. I got all the lighting going today and was able to see the particles that were flowing in the water and tank, and they were moving and the bottom was clear.

Mike