Spray Bar Help

[creativityasaweapon]

'morning! I currently have three HOB running on our 125 and have a perfectly good megaflow 3 sump that I'd like to get running. I had it going for a while, with a few different configs, and I thought I had finally figured out a good return. I started it up and almost immediately shut it off because the gars started to glass-surf uncontrollably and our Lima shed its slime coat.

Here is how I had it set up: I plumbed the pump (quiet one 3000) back to the tank with vinyl hose to 2 90s and a T fitting. Off of the T I have 2 8" pieces of pvc with four 3/16" holes drilled in each piece. Giving me a total of a 16" span with eight holes. I also drilled 6 of the 8 holes at an angle to push water towards the sides of the tank. I thought that this would disperse the water enough, but every fish seems to hate it.

So my question is, should I remake this with longer pieces to distribute water better and possibly go with smaller holes? Any help would be awesome!

 

[creativityasaweapon]

Alright, so I tried a new bar, 20" on both sides, so a 40" spray bar with 24 3/8" holes. The flow was great but my pump was stronger than the overflow. So, I cut the pvc down 4 holes, so now there are 20 holes, but this time I feel like the pump was way stronger. Is this because I made more pressure in the spraybar? I can't really see that speeding the water up. I assumed if anything it would choke the flow back a bit, even though the water has a shorter distance to travel.

But then again, I'm running 1" pipe and 20 3/8" holes makes a 7.5" hole.

I know I shouldn't choke a pump down at all, but this is just a temporary fix until I can rebuild the overflow or mod the sump to take 1.5".

 

[duanes]

Centrifugal pumps can be throttled back with a gate valve or ball valve on the outflow without causing damage.
You just don't want to choke the incoming water to the pump, this could cause cavitation and damage.