Aquarium filter DIY idea with inlet hoses.

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fhawk362

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Oct 24, 2009
1,282
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36
Royal palm beach, FL
Today I went to home depot cause I have HOb filters on my 150 gallon which it only goes about an 1/8th of the way down so i used pvc to lower where the water comes in at. After successfully doing this I got an idea, What if I were to add some elbows and create 2 or 3 inlet pipes along the bottom of the tank. I was wondering would this work, would each inlet be weaker because the pump is only so strong or will it work fine. Will the maximum flow (rated at 300 gph) change for the better, worse, or not at all. If you don't understand what I want to do heres a ghetto diagram

I want my filter tube to look like this |
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| | |
 
thats supposed to look like this

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| | |
 
Ok, this is what I did, seems to be working pretty good, I extended both the filter inlet tubes and on the canister I put an elbow on and made it go about 3 inches above the gravel, drilled the pipe to suck in debris and have it travelling along about half the tank.

filter and jags 018.JPG
 
I did the same deal with a pair of canisters.
PVC across the bottom/back of the tank. I used saw cuts for the holes instead of drilling, much faster and less mess.
Elbow up to the canister intake lines. This pipe ran the whole length of a 55. I kept an eye on how it picked up debris and for me, abut 6-7 inches from the elbows was it. The whole center section didn`t seem to be doing any good.
 
KaiserSousay;3789788; said:
I did the same deal with a pair of canisters.
PVC across the bottom/back of the tank. I used saw cuts for the holes instead of drilling, much faster and less mess.
Elbow up to the canister intake lines. This pipe ran the whole length of a 55. I kept an eye on how it picked up debris and for me, abut 6-7 inches from the elbows was it. The whole center section didn`t seem to be doing any good.
Click to expand...

I kinda figured itd be like that so I drilled fewer holes where it would be stronger than allowed for more intake further down, dont know if it works exactly but it made sense to me lol
 
Indeed. I did a write up on this a while back (see my sig link)

running one intake will work better than 3. Each additional pipe will be less effective the further. It gets from the intake. Water will the the path of least resistance, so the first intake will draw the most water while the next two will draw much less. And because of the diffusion of 3 intakes, all 3 may be less effective in pulling solid waste from the water. (in theory). But that would depend more on the strength of the pump I think.
 
Ill see what happens, it reversible so no harm no foul
 
Nice tank... Just gave me an idea...........Damn not again
 
john73738;3792333; said:
Nice tank... Just gave me an idea...........Damn not again
Click to expand...

haha do you mind sharing?
 
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