Help on plugging noisy hole on overflow?

[DracoKat]

I have a reef-ready tank with a corner overflow. The piece that returns the water back into the tank has a hole (by the manufacturer) at the inside 90 degree elbow. Water is coming out of that and is very noisy. it took me weeks to figure out where the noise was coming from (I am hearing impaired, I can't pin-point noises easily). The hole is about half inch above water line.

My tank is set up with fish sump and all.. how can I fix this, just shy of turning off sump and filling the hole with silicone? I don't want to leave the sump turned off for hours while silicone cures.

any ideas how I can plug up this hole? I held my finger over it and it made no difference to the output, aside from the silence.

EDIT: or would it be OK to turn off the overflow, let skimmer and gyro produce oxygen for 24 hours till silicone cures?

 

[DracoKat]

for a temporary fix, I took a piece of filter floss and tied it around the overflow hole. helps tremendously, but not really a long-term fix. I am wondering if that hole is important if the manufacturer added it and may be a bad idea to plug it after all

 

[DracoKat]

boosting up

please and thank you

 

[Bdog4u2]

Stick a zip tie through it it will quiet it down and still allow it to break siphon during power outage otherwise hope you have a big sump if you block it completely

 

[stunreefer Verified Sponsor]

That hole is a "siphon break". So when you lose power, or disconnect return pump from power source, the display tank will only drain down to the level of that hole (rather than level of inlet, which can sometimes be considerably lower).

Sometimes you can spin the fitting so the siphon break points down into the water, or any direction not making noise and not shooting water out of display.

If you can post a pic I'm sure members can give additional options to reduce noise

 

[aaronn]

I have a similar set up on my 70 gallon. I found it was mostly water splash that made noise. I had a punch of bio balls from an old sump that I floated under the siphon break. This did a great job of quieting the return. Just make sure that the bio balls can't get sucked into your drain.

 

[lion king]

Change the elbow. Most overflows are put together plug and play. If the elbow is glued in place you still should be able to pull the whole standpipe out of the bulkhead. Cut the pipe then add a coupler with a new elbow. I had to to do that to my overflow also. If you put your return far under the surface of the water you can add another siphon break along the return nozzle line so it won't make noise. You don't want your sump to overflow by back siphoning.