# Glass Spray Bar



## aaronbear (Mar 17, 2013)

I have been trying to find a glass spray bar for sale in the US for a while and one popped up on eBay a few weeks ago so I bought it. It came today! Here are a few pics of it inside the tank, I haven't hooked it up to the filter yet because I am waiting on some elbows to arrive for my tubing.


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## rdmustang1 (Oct 20, 2013)

Very nice tube and tank. The tube looks like it's made for that tank. The tank looks like it has extra thick glass. Who makes that tank?


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## aaronbear (Mar 17, 2013)

rdmustang1 said:


> Very nice tube and tank. The tube looks like it's made for that tank. The tank looks like it has extra thick glass. Who makes that tank?



Thanks! The tank is a custom job from glass cages, I didn't request for the glass to be so thick but when it showed up on the delivery truck like that I wasn't about to complain lol.


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## Steve002 (Feb 7, 2014)

Looks really nice. You mustn't be as ham fisted as me. After breaking 2 different lily tubes I've gone to acrylic instead of glass.


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## aaronbear (Mar 17, 2013)

Steve002 said:


> Looks really nice. You mustn't be as ham fisted as me. After breaking 2 different lily tubes I've gone to acrylic instead of glass.


I haven't broken any myself yet, hopefully I can keep it that way. I've had a couple close calls accidentally banging them against my stainless steel sink when cleaning them but it seems like the glass is pretty thick even though they're just cheap eBay pipes from China. I've heard the ADA pipes are pretty thin and fragile though, but never owned a set myself.


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## jmf3460 (Aug 21, 2013)

beautiful, so is this in place of the lily pipe on the other side, or will you run both??


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## aaronbear (Mar 17, 2013)

jmf3460 said:


> beautiful, so is this in place of the lily pipe on the other side, or will you run both??


It's not hooked up yet, I was just excited that it came and wanted to post a pic of it in the tank right away. :icon_cool I'm planning to remove the lily pipe on the right side and plumb my filter to use the spray bar instead. The part I've been waiting on should be coming in the mail today so I'll be tinkering with it once I get off work, I'll be sure to post a new pic once I get it hooked up!


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## exv152 (Jun 8, 2009)

Nice tank btw!


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## Lab_Man (Dec 7, 2012)

I must say that you have a magnificent aquascape. 

I am going to buy a 90 from glass cages. I love their quality of workmanship. 

I have a plastic spray bar from Eheim that does the same thing as yours. I like the glass version better.


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## jo.jacques (Dec 2, 2013)

This is exactly what I was looking for.

Do you have the link to that item?
thanks!


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## mistuhmarc (Oct 1, 2013)

I'd like to know about this spray bar as well.


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## aaronbear (Mar 17, 2013)

Once I got home from work, I plumbed the new spray bar into my system, here are some pics



















A couple pics of how the plumbing job turned out



















I love the look, the pipes stand out a lot less in the tank than with a lily pipe and there aren't any dead spots in the tank. I'm also getting awesome CO2 diffusion because of the longer hoses and elbows, there aren't any visible bubbles coming from the outflow which I had plenty of with the lily pipe. There is one flaw though...










This is what the flow reading looks like with the spray bar on. I know it isn't the plumbing job because if I run the filter with the bar off and the water just coming out of the pipe I get full flow. Too bad it's glass or I could just make the holes a little bigger. The velocity of the water coming out of the spray bar's holes is extremely high and my tank is getting a ton of circulation, but I'm probably diminishing the effectiveness of my filter because it's not turning over as much water in the same amount of time. My filter is definitely overpowered for the size of my tank so maybe the reduced water turnover won't have any measurable detriment on the system.

I'm not sure how I feel about the spray bar now that I'm using it. It looks great and is doing what I wanted but unless I can be ok with my filter always reading reduced flow then my only other option with it is probably to run it with a longer middle piece across the back of the tank which would ruin the aesthetic gains I had from getting rid of the lily pipe.


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## aaronbear (Mar 17, 2013)

Sorry to the people looking for a link to the eBay auction, it looks like the seller sold out already. It was listing #281268278114 if anybody still wants to check it out.


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## jo.jacques (Dec 2, 2013)

^^ Its back on sale. Thanks!!!

*Nevermind


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## Steve002 (Feb 7, 2014)

You can enlarge the holes but you have to be careful doing it. A Dremel unit with a conical sanding attachment utilizing silicone carbide will work. Just be careful not to apply too much pressure, or allow the heat to build up too much, or let it get jammed.


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## aaronbear (Mar 17, 2013)

I ordered some acrylic tubing that will fit and I am going to try drilling and cutting a section of that rather than drilling the glass tube. I am planning to replace only the middle section of the spray bar and keep the glass end piece. I'll post pictures after I make it. Also I noticed that my clear flexible tubing is turning white so it needs to get replaced, does anybody have a recommendation of a good 5/8" clear tubing? Is there somewhere that sells silicone tubing in that size? I use silicone tubing for my dosing pumps and I really like it. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## aaronbear (Mar 17, 2013)

Time for an update! The acrylic tubes arrived and I drilled and cut a section to replace the middle part of the glass spray bar. I only replaced the middle section of the spray bar and left the end piece with small holes because the round glass end looks much nicer than a DIY acrylic piece. The diameter of the acrylic is slightly smaller than the glass though so the fit isn't as tight in the sections of vinyl hose that hold the stiff glass and acrylic tube pieces together. It seems to be holding just fine though, but it wasn't something I expected.

The large holes in the acrylic section fixed my flow issue though, now my filter is showing that flow is running at full capacity! One interesting side effect of using different sized holes in the spray bar sections is that water gets sucked from the back side of the tank towards the front and then blown around by the spray bar. The large holes and high flow coming from the acrylic section are also creating a strong vortex on the surface of my water, much more than I saw from my generic lily pipe. I don't have problems with surface scum but if I did I would probably be thankful for it.

One thing I was surprised by was the fact that the acrylic seems to be much "stickier" when it comes to bubbles, they really build up on it quite a bit on the acrylic but just slide right off the glass part. 

Some pics:


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