Help quiet my scrubber down

[Nmcgrawj]

Mine has been running for about 3 days. It's too loud. Water is hitting the sump water creating a ton of noise. My screen does go below the water surface.


I'm going to make a new slot tube but wanted any tips to make it quiet. If I cant get it quiet I won't run it.


My current slot is straight, but it's not the exact same width across. Gonna aim to fix this.



Any ideas? Anyone experience this?

[Floyd R Turbo]

The varying width probably doesn't help. It is probably concentrating flow in that spot and crashing down. Re-cut your slot tube. Also once the screen gets some buildup on it, that will tend to slow and even out the flow so that it doesn't "stream" on the way down the screen

[Nmcgrawj]

Great.

1/8" is the max it should be right? Is a slot smaller than 1/8" ok?

The pipes are 1 1/4" too if that matters.

[Floyd R Turbo]

1/8" minimum, because the screen material is 1/16", which leaves 1/32" on either side. If you have more than 35 GPH/in, then you will probably need a wider slot.

[Nmcgrawj]

Does it naturally center itself in the slot?


And I have to test my flow too. I know I have more than enough available but haven't double checked it. Going off visual now...

[Floyd R Turbo]

I don't know that it does or if that matters. Flow seems to even out on both sides pretty well. I'm not too fluent in fluid dynamics so I can't explain it, but it works well as long as the slot it pointed straight down

[Nmcgrawj]

Great. Thanks again

I'm feeding it from both ends of the pipe so hopefully it is just slot width that's the issue.

I'll post pictures/videos in the next couple days. Many I'll try getting the slot the same even if it's larger than 1/8 to see what happens.

[bguile]

My question would be, how are you feeding the ATS? Dedicated pump? Overflow drainage?

The reason I ask is b/c when I first built my scrubber, I was feeding from the overflow of my tank using dual dursos. As the design goes it sucks just the right amount of air to not create a siphon. However, this causes a problem when the other end is not submerged and you get crashing water and air bubbles. I changed over to a BeanAnimal design overflow and now my ATS is almost completely silent. Like night and day really. HTH

[Floyd R Turbo]

Not to get too off topic, but I'm putting a BA overflow on a new tank, can you post a pic of yours? I'm trying to figure out how to make the siphon work with 2 outlets. I'm going to have upwards of 3000 GPH and only need about 7-800 of that for the scrubber.

[Nmcgrawj]

I'm feeding mine off the return pump. I didn't want to deal with the siphon on my overflow.

[Marksfish]

1/8" minimum, because the screen material is 1/16", which leaves 1/32" on either side. If you have more than 35 GPH/in, then you will probably need a wider slot.
Sorry, being a bit thick here. Any ideas what that is in millimetres please? My calculations say 12.5mm, but that can't be right??

Mark

edit to add: Found it eventually, just over 3mm.

[bguile]

Not to get too off topic, but I'm putting a BA overflow on a new tank, can you post a pic of yours? I'm trying to figure out how to make the siphon work with 2 outlets. I'm going to have upwards of 3000 GPH and only need about 7-800 of that for the scrubber.

My apologies Floyd, that should have read a "Herbie" overflow...not the BeanAnimal

[bguile]

I'm feeding mine off the return pump. I didn't want to deal with the siphon on my overflow.

Hmm...tough to say here. I first had an ATS on my smaller tank that was fed directly from a pump and it was loud. The only way I was able to get it to quiet down was by adding an additional upward L section of pipe to try to "reservoir" the water so that it would "fall" down the sides of the screen vs being forced out of the slot by the pump. My next design thought was to maybe have some type of reservoir box feeding the screen, but I changed over to just using the overflow.