plumbing troubles

[balistidae]

I have a 90gallon with a 45gallon sump. I have been running the sump for about 6 months and have been have problems keeping it quiet/keeping the flow up. Are there any guys here that are running quiet sumps? I tried the durso standpipe to no avail and am now using a stockman. thanks, Greg

[vertex]

I think the only thing that will shut up a high flow sump system is:

-3/4" (or even 1" for that matter) solid wood frame with felt and rubber door stops
-Insulated inside of the cabinet (carpet or foam)
-Hanging / cushioned (suspended in water) water pumps
-Soft flex tubing insulated for sound by pool noodles
-Enclosed wooded return run for the tubing to run back up to the canopy in to insulate and keep the return lines quiet in the cabinet
-No hard contacts to the wood cabinet anywhere, cushion it all
-VERY Low noise fans in canopy
-Oversized plumping to avoid "suction" opportunity sounds
-Standpipe method for overflow
-High water level in the overflow so as not to waterfall into corner box
-Minimal sharp bends if you're using hard plumbing (use 45s, not 90s)
-Step up the size of the tubing in the canopy to drop the pressure and reduce flow noise at spray bar
-Silence the canopy with foam or felt stoppers where it lifts open
-Use a ball valve at the bottom of the drop down to the sump to control the water level in the drain line to eliminate "air suction" from the bottom

If you're not doing all those things, it a high flow sump system just WON'T be quite!

Just kidding! I haven't done ALL these things (most I have though) and my 90g FW sump system with 500gph sump is still loud. Hope those are some ideas however to help you shut up your system! I've given up, the pump itself is my loudest part of the system, which echos worst in the canopy due to some horrible resonate frequencies in the canopy cabinet...

Have fun!!

[Delphinus]

Without seeing your sump in person it may be hard to speculate on causes.

However, one thing that makes a huge difference, from a sound perspective, is how the water enters the sump.

I've found that submerging the outputs (any pipe where water enters the sump) makes a very large difference.

There shouldn't be a difference between a Stockman and a Durso ... only the amount of space they take up is different. Sounds like there's some fine tuning needed. The amount of air entering the standpipe will make a difference with the slurping.

[trilinearmipmap]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...e+silent+valve