OK so I picked up my worms from Paul the other day and commented on his skimmer being quieter. He has a muffler on his. He asks why don't you put one on yours? DUH I thought of it but *!^$* that I am I never tried.....so 15 minutes later on Sunday my skimmer went from a loud beast to a quiet one. Used the tubes that my son's LED lights came in, cut it down to about 3 inches, the end caps were perfect, semi-soft so they didn't need sealed drilled a hole in either end cap, and inserted two harder plastic tubes in either end, one was attached to the flexible hose on my skimmer the other is the intake. Done. Crap that was easy. Now to see if there is a performance drop.