How to route overflow hose into sump?

[PaulM]

I have my new Oceanic 70 Tec tank all set up but I am having troulpe with therouting the water. How do you get it to enter the sump quietly and with out a ton of bubbles? Right now it is making my sump / refugium into a protein skimmer.

 

[Brian]

A simple solution would be to put a ball valve on the output of your pump (if you don't already have one) and throttle back the flow. How far away from the water level is your drain?

 

[billyr98]

dumping your drain into a filter sock is always a good thing for killing microbubbles.. plus it catches big detrius..

 

[mladencovic]

Submersing the end of the return pipe would silent the noise and would reduce the amount of bubbles.

 

[JohnS_323]

I'll start by saying that I'm using every one of the tips above and they all work well. One other thing I do is to put a 90* elbow at the end of the return pipe and make it so that 1/2 of it is under water and 1/2 is above. Doing this allows the air to escape out of the top (eliminating bubles) and prevents that "toilet flushing" sound cause by back pressure in the hose. I came upon this one recently and is what I use most often these days.

 

[PaulM]

I have a ball valve on my return line. I also have the return pipe under water and it seems that air is getting trapped in the return pipe as stated. I am going to try the 90* on the end. I thought about trying that but I cannot find 1.25 PVC elbow's. Thanks for the input it is most appreciated.

 

[PaulM]

has anyone tried putting a ball valve on the drain line from the tank to the sump? My theory is if I fill the return line up with water no more noise.

 

[JohnS_323]

That's not a good idea. You never want to restrict your drain flow. There are some other things you can try, like building durso's or covering your over flow, etc, to help with the noise. Keep trying different things and eventually you'll stumble on the right comnbination.

There are so many things that could go wrong with putting a ball valve on your drain, all of them resulting in an overflow from your display, that it's not worth attempting.

JMO, though. Maybe others have been successful going that route.

 

[Brian]

I agree 100% with John, I do have ball valves on my drains, but only for cleaning/removing. Did you try the 90* elbow?

Actually, I don't think anyone has asked what kind of overflow, and what type pump and gph are you pushing through it? Is it possible that you are putting too much flow through it?

 

[PaulM]

Yes I have tried the 90* elbows. They work ok but its still noisy. I have the stock oceanic Durso overflow and a mag7 pump. The hose coming from the tank is ribbed could that be causing the noise? The overflow box has a cover on it. Here is a picture of the tank.

 

[saltwater4life]

I was just going to ask that. I had the same problem or so i believe. Too much flow makes alot of noise for me

 

[JohnS_323]

Oddly, we've always had the opposite problem. With too little flow we got a lot of noise. The more we were able to match the flow to the max of the overflows, the quieter it got.

It sounds like you're doing everything right. I'm surprised it's that loud, especially with the durso's. They usually quiet things right down.

The other thing I've noticed is that things usually quiet down on their own over time. I guess the gunk that forms in the lines slows things down enough. I dunno. . .

 

[PaulM]

I guess I will wait it out and see what happens.