CLS Advise

[erikncyndi]

I am building my CLS system today with an SCWD wave makers. I have two SCWD's for each side of the tank. My question is as you can see in my pic I have my two overflow boxes with an open passthrough in the middle. Can I pull my water out of my overflow boxes for my CLS to keep my tank looking better with as few extra pipes in the Show tank as possible.

[theplatypus]

You can/could, but it might be really loud. I would look into making a "hook" to feed the cls. Search here for a post made by Whiskey. Yes, I know that I spelled his name wrong. I just can't bring myself to spelling it the wrong way.

[Fly Guy]

You dont want to do that for two reasons.

1. What Platypus said...it will be really hard to keep quiet. especially on a little overflow box like that.

2. The overflow is designed to skim the surface of the water and send that dirtier surface water to the sump to be skimmed. If your cls intake is IN the overflow, you will be spitting it right back into the tank. CLS intakes should be lower in the tank than the surface.

[erikncyndi]

So I should run a line maybe three quarters of the way down into the tank?

[Fly Guy]

Originally Posted by erikncyndi

So I should run a line maybe three quarters of the way down into the tank?

If you have a sandbed, i would shoot for more like halfway or so.

Also a couple of things to consider. You want to make it accessible (i.e reachable) and easily removable to clean. Im not saying you cant hide it with some rocks, but you dont want to hide it with your entire rockpile.

A good and cheap way to do this is to make a simple intake pipe. Simply get a piece of pipe and riddle it with holes. The more holes the better so critters wont get stuck against the power of the flow against their will and die. Then at the top of this intake pipe where it connects your plumbing, use a threaded male, and a threaded female fitting to connect the intake pipe to your plumbing. Just make sure that this threaded male and threaded female connection is UNDER the water so it is ok if it leaks a touch. Otherwise if you ahd this threaded removable connection above thw water it could create massive amounts of microbubbles.

make sense??

[erikncyndi]

Crystal, thanks