Topic : SprayBar for a return

PelagicMagic

New member
At the last meeting at robs, someone told me that having a spray bar for the return will lower the level of heat emitted by the return pump because the pressure is lowered and the pump doesnââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t have to pump as hard. Is this true?
 
Untrue. The amount of head is proportional to water height, head loss inside the pipe, and restriction of the outlet nozzle.

A spray bar would only lower the amount of restriction if it had more nozzle cross section area than your current nozzle, which is probably an open ended pipe.

A spray bar will help to disperse flow at a lower velocity over a greater amount of area.
 
A spray bar will definately lower the flow output of he pump, so why would you do that? Just add a fan to reduce heat, don't give up your flow.
 
ya. I would also have to re-do the pvc too which is alot of work. I am really trying to get away from my tank. Hopefully the warm weather, fishing, and landscaping will do the trick
 
I use to have two spray bar returns in my 180gal from 1996 - 2006. When I finally removed them this year and went with the basic open-end pvc on one side of the tank (opposite of side with drains), it greatly improved the surface flow.

This was accomplished by no longer having the pvc spray bars at the water line interfering with the surface water movement thus creating better surface action as well as having the open-end return pvc flowing only horizontally, focused at pushing water along the surface toward the drains. I think this design has greatly helped improve the poor water flow/circulation problems I use to have.

The spray returns were located in the center of the tank and each one originally sprayed vertically. The problem with this was that if any air bubbles were present in the return line they would get pushed downward into the tank and many of the bubbles would attach to corals, liverock, etc. If the spray bars were placed above the water line then I would get too much "splash", which caused a lot of salt build up on top of the tank and a film on the MHs. Because of this I had to lower the spray bars so they sat on the water line. I modified the spray bars so they would also spray horizontal (to help with the air bubble problem). Although the spray was now horizontal and vertical, having the spray bars on the water line caused the surface flow to become interrupted in the center of the tank. Because of this, sometimes a surface film would build up in an area that could not be easily cleared out by the return flow. This was a sign of poor surface movement. This also caused a lot of particles in the water column to not get "caught up" in the upper flow and make their way toward the drains and eventually to the sump/skimmer. To try and help with this I added a maxijet on each end of the tank and pointed the output upwards at the surface to help break up this problem.

What I have done now is instead of trying to use the vertical flow of the spray bars as part of the water circulation in the tank I leave it up to the Tunze PHs to perform this task. With the spray bars removed and the Tunze PHs taking care of the water cuirculation, the primary job of the open-end pvc return is focused on managing the surface flow. I was also able to remove the maxijet "heaters" that were being used to break up the surface water (I say heaters because I only needed the PHs to help address a problem. If I resolved the problem then I wouldn't have the extra heat added to the tank).

If you want to go with spray bars then hopefully by expressing the problems I've encountered it can help you with a design that works well. I dunno, maybe there is a popular design out there that already takes care of these problems.
 
I like spray bars when you have enough outlets in them. I want a disturbed flow. It depends on what else you have in your tank to creat water movement.
 
What about a spray bar behind your rockwork? I know it's not the same discussion as above but I was thinking about having one to keep detrius (sp?) from building up behind the rocks
 
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