Quieting the beananimal trickle drain

[User1]

While I agree whole heartedly that what most consider a Bean Animal drain setup is actually a modified version of the true original design. It irks me like saying all slim internal overflows with external boxes are Ghost overflows which they absolutely aren't.

I disagree that the true Bean Animal is the ONLY setup that absolutely guarantees no flooding. All of the modified BA setups provide the exact same security as the original one does just with a different setup.

And from what I have heard he is revamping the website, I'm not entirely sure when it will be back up and running though..

Thanks for the info with regards to his site.

As far as the disagreement - you are probably right. I've only used two. Original Durso on a 100 gallon and currently the BA as a direct install per his design.

 

[Holy_makerel]

One of my friends and I both have the shadow overflow. Due to space issues she had to setup her gate valve for the full siphon directly under the external box. Mine is located directly above where the pipes enter my sump. Mine runs silent. The pump in my QT tank makes more noise than my entire DT setup. Because of where she has the gate valve there is always air in her full siphon pipes under the gate, which makes it produce a lot of noise. Could you be having a similar issue?

 

[Bubblehead8292]

This unit is a full siphon. Extremely quiet. Something I created. No external box behind the aquarium. A slim full siphon submerged main drain with a companion backup emergency drain. Units can be mounted any location on the back internal glass. Control valve for setting full siphon flow positioned near the top of sump, located on the red piping. Yellow piping is the backup emergency drain. Easy to reach, easy to tweak. The black piping is a balanced plumbing loop return with 4 position able return outlets.

 

[Bubblehead8292]

I have an eclipse L setup as a beananimal with a gate valve on the full siphon. I'd really like the trickle drain to be as silent as possible as it drives me nuts even with the overflow boxes top cover and with covering the top of the weir.

What i ended up doing as a temporary fix is setting up a Dorso using a 1" tee + 1" cap + 1" elbow on the trickle drain, but I don't really like this. It takes the entire height of the overflow box and forces me to nearly close my full-siphon drain to avoid it sucking air as the dorso ends up being pretty low in the box.

I've looked at some other designs but I was hoping for some suggestions on an alternative approach to this. I've been eyeing to do something like the maggie muffler or gurgle

 

[Martingale]

Do you have room to set up something like this?

Picture the exterior box where the flat strainer is your primary drain, the U-pipe (90 elbow with a 90 street elbow with a hole drilled on top) is the trickle and the straight pipe is the emergency.

Your temporary fix of putting a Durso with a tee is not needed as it adds unnecessary height.

Sorry for the bump, but as an update, that had worked flawlessly. I think the air hole I made is rather small at about 1/8", but it's dead quiet. Any thoughts on a good size to keep it from clogging without any noise?

 

[ca1ore]

Air hole should be above the water level during normal operation, so nothing really to clog. I use a 1 1/2” diameter U trap on my secondary with a 1/4” hole. No noise.

 

[User1]

Sorry for the bump, but as an update, that had worked flawlessly. I think the air hole I made is rather small at about 1/8", but it's dead quiet. Any thoughts on a good size to keep it from clogging without any noise?

On mine I used a 1/4" John Guest fitting.

 

[Martingale]

Air hole should be above the water level during normal operation, so nothing really to clog. I use a 1 1/2” diameter U trap on my secondary with a 1/4” hole. No noise.

I have it where when the pumps are off and restarted the water level will climb right above the air hole, then quickly siphon and drop down to where it's just a trickle in the U-bend, with the actual full siphon still pulling most of the water. When it restarts is when I'm mostly concerned on the clogging, as I think the aforementioned set up is ideal, correct?

I'll try going 1/4", that seems more reasonable.

 

[jsvand5]

I always run herbies. Wouldn’t it be easiest to just remove the primary drain stand pipe entirely and just have the bulkhead there and then turn the gate valve until the water gets close to reaching the secondary but actually letting it stay completely dry? I’m not seeing the benefit to trying to tune it to a trickle? If the primary drains standpipe is totally removed there would be plenty of space to have a good stable siphon and not have to worry about enough water going down the secondary to have any noise. Just seems a little unnecessarily complicated when the secondary and emergency could easily just be left dry.

 

[Martingale]

I always run herbies. Wouldn’t it be easiest to just remove the primary drain stand pipe entirely and just have the bulkhead there and then turn the gate valve until the water gets close to reaching the secondary but actually letting it stay completely dry? I’m not seeing the benefit to trying to tune it to a trickle? If the primary drains standpipe is totally removed there would be plenty of space to have a good stable siphon and not have to worry about enough water going down the secondary to have any noise. Just seems a little unnecessarily complicated when the secondary and emergency could easily just be left dry.

The trickle is to help ensure a quick siphon as far as I'm aware. I played around with this some on my setup and there's a noticeable difference in how quickly the secondary pipe siphons out water. Given the size of a typical external overflow box I'd say it's probably worth the extra 3 minutes of tweaking to get it right.

I originally was using a herbie as the "trickle"/secondary filter, but it's not as quiet as the current set up and took up quite a bit more room in the box, both height and width.

@Water Dog 's setup is how I have my overflow currently and with that I've now managed to avoid all noise from the tank entirely; pumps, flow, filter socks, etc. I even have this style of filter sock chamber, albeit the pipes are only just below the water level and not so far down.