Plumbing

[patedship]

Is a RIO 2100 too much flow for my return it goes up the tank and to some 3/4" locline. My drain can be seen in my gallery the bulkhead is a 1.5" maybe a 1" but it has a horizontal overflow 8X5X4.
What should i do to get good flow? As of now i have my rio adjusted to about 75% and my drain is around the same but all i get is an awful gurgling sound i am about to shoot myself...

 

[crumbletop]

Shoot for 3-5x display volume for flow through the sump. Get the main flow in the display through a closed loop or power heads. For a single overflow with at least a 1" drainpipe and 3/4" return, the 2100 should be fine. Your drain looks like it narrows down quite a bit after the ball valve, so you likely will have problems with flow through the drain. You also don't show whether or not you have it plumbed kind of like a durso on the inside of the tank or not. Does water just flow right into the bulkhead on the side or is there a 90 degree elbow that points down?

For a 1" drain, I keep the piping 1" all the way to the sump. It looks like yours goes down to a 3/4" barb (which is even more narrow in terms of inner diameter). I'd redo the drain plumbing because the pump should be fine at 100%.

Jack

 

[patedship]

Yeah there is a 90 degree elbow pointing down. And yep the 3/4" barb is there, when i open both of them up completely it work fine but the flow in the sump gets crazy, i have a fuge down there in the middle section. 600 gph of flow down there seems like too much.

 

[crumbletop]

I have an eheim 1250 on my system which is flowing probably around 200 - 220 gph through the sump. Your pump, because of head loss (I'm assuming it pumps up about 4 feet) is probably moving around 350 gph. You should be fine with your current pump.

Okay, so with the 90 degree bend it is like a true durso. You should be able to get your drain to be near silent. I'm not sure what kind of noise you will get from having most of the durso on the outside of the tank. You likely need to have a smaller hole on the top of your durso. Try putting a little dab of silicone up there or covering part of the hole with tape to try different amounts of air. This will change the amount of noise you get as well. You should also look into keeping 1" all the way to the sump. This may help tremendously with the amount of bubbles, etc that are proably making it to the sump.

Jack