I tried slowing down the return pump but that didn't do anything but make the problem worse. I do have a tube in the top of the Durso as well so this problem was really weird.
After searching RC for solutions to this "breathing" problem slowing down the drain was about the only thing I found to fix it. I had a ball valve handy so that is what I tried. I also saw that using a larger diameter pipe at the end of the drain would slow it down too so I will probably try that too.
I'm watching the level in the sump to make sure that my pump isn't pushing more water into the tank than can drain. I've also tested running with the drain valve closed to make sure the tank can handle the water from the sump and vice versa and everything is good so no flooding problems, at least not from an overflowing perspective.
Thanks for the suggestions and bright side of removing the divider and yea I figure I'm going to end up with a filter sock
i had this problem with my 39g pro when i tried to install the eheim 1262. it was just too much flow for the durso. you can try and restrict the size of the hole at the top of the durso so the drain can accommodate more flow without having to "fill and flush," but i'll tell you that i was not able to fix that problem, even when i tried to use a ball valve to slow flow from the return pump. i switched to the tunze 1073.020 return pump and I have been very happy with that. no more fill-and-flush problems (no noise whatsoever in fact). I've heard good things about the 1073.040 as well.
using the valve on the drain is a fine way of fixing it (gate is easier to fine tune than ball, as you said); however, you can get yourself in trouble in a hurry if something clogs that drain since you have no "emergency backup" like a typical "full siphon" gate-valve controlled herbie-style drain would have. it will quickly overflow your display if the drain gets clogged.
here's a solution if you don't want to replace your return pump: you could always re-purpose your return bulkhead as an emergency drain and run the return hose outside and up-and-over the back of the tank.