Overflow plumbing

[sunflashx]

I was wondering if someone could explain this a little to me.

I was talking to the owner of the shop who is going to drill my tank, and was discussing the need for room for some sort of standpipe setup to keep the drain from being noisy. He then proceeded to show me how he does it on one of his tanks.

He told me he prefers the Keep It Simple way of doing things and eliminates the drain noise by putting a ball valve just before the drain empties into the sump. He showed me on his display tank how it worked. Simply putting a little backpressure on the drain stopped the gurgling and bubbles from occuring.

I saw it work, so I don't understand why people make those complicated contraptions to reduce drain noise.

[dattack]

A stand pipe takes like a few minutes to make and just as easy.

I personally don't like ball valves or gate valves connected to my overflow drain considering there is some restriction of water flow when it passes through.

[sunflashx]

It can't be that much restriction or the tank would flood. The return lines always return at the same rate. If the drains can't keep up, the tank floods. Running a ball valve on the drain just seems to allow you to balance the two.

[dattack]

Originally posted by sunflashx
It can't be that much restriction or the tank would flood. The return lines always return at the same rate. If the drains can't keep up, the tank floods. Running a ball valve on the drain just seems to allow you to balance the two.

I know that but ball valves have a tendency to clog with algae/snails/calcium builtup. Over time, it could lead to problems.

[dougchambers]

There are some advantages to putting a valve on your tank drain loop (noise, drain shut off, plumbing isolation, etc.) However, if you do, I highly recommend you install a control loop to shut down your return pump in the event the valve or overflow gets clogged.

We have a float in the tank and one in the sump that controls the pump. If the tank gets to high or the sump gets too low, the return pump shuts off. It has saved my butt many times. The latests was when a large Trochus snail wend over the Durso and got caught on top of the valve. Obviously the drain was significantly restricted. The float in the tank kicked in and took control of the return loop. Did I mention this happend somewhere in the middle of the night?

You can build a control loop with a couple of floats, a relay, outlet box, and transformer for about $30-35 dollars and it is worth every penny!

With that said, I do create a little bit of backpressure with my gate valve on the return line to minimize noise. Don't use ball valves. They are worthless for fine flow adjustments.

Doug

[Wayne's World]

Doug has the right idea. I just finished plumbing a 90g with a Stockman. I'm pumping a lot of water through the overflow and it's going into the basement. Absolutely no noise in the aquarium, but the sump in the basement was a bubbling nightmare. I put a ball valve on the exhaust end it the sump. That really helped with the microbubbles. Problems occured when putting in LR covered in bubble algae, the loose algae partially plugged the ball valve. I noticed it while I was in the basement and I observed that the pump was almost sucking air. Needless to say I removed the ball valve and just added more baffles on the sump. The tank would not have overflowed, I leave just enough water at the pump end of the sump so when the level drops the pump will just suck air. The float and switch system is by far a better idea.