Overflow box making me give up on hobby

[paxton.rock]

I made my own sump about 6 months ago with an HOB overflow. After 3 months I crashed my tank. Took a 3 month break. I just filed my tank back up and fired it up and overflow is still a loud piece of **** that makes me punch a hole in the wall. Wanting to give up so bad. I can’t handle this HOB crap. But again, I can’t afford a pre drilled rimless fancy aquarium.

And now 1 of my 2 “U” tubes for the siphon is collecting a huge air bubble that I never had a problem with before and I can NOT get rid of it.

Anyways, if I can’t figure out how to make this thing keep a siphon and be quiet then I am seriously done with the hobby which breaks my heart.

So please inform me with something I don’t know. Thanks.

I have an Eshopps HOB overflow

 

[MoshJosh]

Sorry to hear you are having such trouble. I am not super familiar with HOB overflows, but I have heard of people having air bubbles build up if the overflow is oversized, not sure how true that is, but a thought. I have used U tubes for water bridges and when I needed to start syphon or to get out air I would just run a piece of airline tubing up the tube until I got to the apex/air bubble and then suck it out and quickly remove the airline tubing, worked a charm.

Bump and hopefully people who are more familiar with these overflows can help.

 

[PotatoPig]

How much flow are you putting through the overflow? And is this the one with two tubes running simultaneously?

 

[paxton.rock]

How much flow are you putting through the overflow? And is this the one with two tubes running simultaneously?

My return pump is powerful enough that I can run the sump dry so I have it turned down. I know that the pump isn’t undersized.

It is the one with 2 tubes yes

 

[ScubaSkeets]

When I was using a HOB overflow, to get rid of the big bubble, I used a some airline tubing with a piece of straw on the end, and routed the stiff end up into the tube so it stayed at the top, where the bubble was. Once I got the siphon running, I was able to suck the air bubble out, and them pull the airline tubing out.
I then used a 90 degree pvc elbow on the drain to reduce the sound. It didn't silence it totally, but reduced the annoying sound significantly.

 

[Tcook]

I had a 55 gallon years ago that was not drilled. I went through several hob boxes that always failed until I got a Lifereef. Not cheap but never lost siphon for me.

 

[crazereef]

Do you have pictures of your overflow? One way to get rid of the bubble constantly is to run an aqualift pump with airline tubing into the U tube. Run it all the time back into your sump ot tank. Secondly, can you fit a small durso drain into the overflow? Itll raise the water level in the overflow, dampens the noise dramatically.

 

[Naekuh]

You can get like a Rio pump and do what scuba says only put the airline hose in the venturi port.
That way it constantly sucks out of the tubing.

Like this for illustration.

Its the poor man's aqualifter.
Just make sure the airline tube is inside the U pipe at the highest point.

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

Why can't you drill your tank and add a normal overflow? Is it tempered?

 

[Kipp's Corals]

I saw someone cover the ends of U tube with plastic wrap. Placed those ends into the tank and OF box and then removed. There was a medium bubble but he just kept flicking it and it eventually went into smaller pieces to full siphon.