Overflow setup questions

[Joel Franco]

I purchased a deep blue 80 gallon this past weekend as a Christmas present to myself and I've been having issues with the over flow. How are you supposed to angle the overflow drain pipe? I feel like I have too much water in the over flow and it causes my sump to fill up almost to the top. Any advice is welcomed.

 

[Bluefish9]

What you have is called a durso standpipe. Its supposed to be turned downward, facing the bottom of the tank.

 

[saltyhog]

What Bluefish9 said. The water level in the overflow shouldn't affect the sump level. If the level in the sump is high, remove some water till you get the desired level.

 

[Joel Franco]

The guy at my LFS runs the same tanks and advised me to run the elbow facing upwards for it to run quieter. I'm not sure if that's true.

 

[MaiReef]

The Durso faces down.

I switched from a Durso to a Stockman to quiet the drain, but even when I had the Durso it was the amount of flow going in that made the difference. Basically, you want the water to drop a bit from the cut outs so that skimming the surface works better and then adjust the height of the Durso to a good height. I use a ball valve on my return pump to slow it down to get the correct flow.

 

[saltyhog]

The guy at my LFS runs the same tanks and advised me to run the elbow facing upwards for it to run quieter. I'm not sure if that's true.

That would effectively raise the height of the water column in the overflow box and therefore lessen the noise from the waterfall effect. However that usually results in a lot of sucking sounds and even more noise. As MaiReef suggested, just raise the length of the drain pipe and leave the elbow turned down.

 

[Joel Franco]

Thanks for the advice guys. I turned the elbow down and started getting the toilet flushing sound with the overflow water level going up and down. I lowered the surface skimmer area to allow more water into the chamber and it stop moving up and down. Now I just have a bunch of water in the skimmer.

 

[httorihanzo]

If you are getting the toilet flushing sound with it turned down then I think the vent hole in the top of the durso isn't big enough (or too big?) basically you have to have the right mix of return pump flow to air in the durso to make it quiet. I haven't used a durso in a while but I did set one up this weekend. The hold on top was too large so I had to put some R/O tube through it to control the amount of air. I still don't have it very quiet but its a work in progress.

 

[Joel Franco]

I believe the hole is too small. I'll try making the hole slightly bigger and seeing if it helps with the flushing.

 

[saltyhog]

What size pipe is the durso? How big is your return pump? Too little return flow can do that also. I had the same problem on a 90 gallon temp tank with 1 1/2" Durso and running a 700 gph pump I had around instead of buying one for the tank.

 

[Joel Franco]

It's a 3/4 return with a 1.5 " return I believe. So you think that the return is putting out more were that the drain can handle? I have a Sicce 3.0.

 

[saltyhog]

No, the opposite. The pump could be putting out to little to keep the big drain from sucking the water level down until it sucks air. This decreases the drain rate and lets the level in the overflow rise until the cycle starts all over again.

A Sicce 3.0 is exactly what I had on the set up I mentioned. If I hadn't brokin it down I was going to put a gate valve on the drain line and see if I could balance it out better.

 

[Joel Franco]

I got it balanced out now. I drilled the hole slightly bigger on the durso pipe and I haven't heard or seen the toilet being flushed. I do have a ton of water in the sump that I had in the main display that I guess was too much. Not sure.