RedSea reefer and return pump question

[mvallee]

Is there a return pump that is not affected by fluctuating voltage? I have to dial in my overflow drain valve everyday to try to keep it quiet, in the morning it gurgles and makes an awful draining sound and I tweak the drain valve to be silent and then at night it needs to be tweaked again, I had a regular marineland tank with standard overflows and never had so many issues, I set it and that was it never heard it again.

After cleaning the drainlines and tweaking the drain again yesterday it is back to gurgling today.

I read on one of the redsea forums someone theorizing that voltage fluctuation between day and night causes AC pumps to speed up and slow down creating different flow volumes and at this point I am starting to think this is a real possibility.

I run an AC pump, Sicce Syncra 5 a pretty high end pump, would a DC pump have this same issue? the pump is 1300 gph for a 100ish gallon tank so in spec for flow for this tank and overflow drains.

Any suggestions would be appreciated as I am at my wits end with this thing, it is loud enough at times that I can hear it on the second floor of my house

 

[dz6t]

DC pump should not have this issue. I am not sure about the voltage theory.
I have a DC6000 pump you can borrow to see if that solve the issue.


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[GraniteReefer]

On my reefer 250 I run a dct4000 at full speed. The only way to operate the overflow quietly is by running a trickle down the emergency overflow by throttling the main overflow to just under the return pump flow rate.

 

[Cheddah93]

Before buying my reefers equipment I was thinking about buy a step up in size pump but read about issues of people maintaining quite operation.

The flow they recommend is what the pump is capable of before head loss.

What size reefer do you have?

 

[mvallee]

DC pump should not have this issue. I am not sure about the voltage theory.
I have a DC6000 pump you can borrow to see if that solve the issue.

Thanks Dong I'll see if I can make it out next weekend, I'll let you know

Before buying my reefers equipment I was thinking about buy a step up in size pump but read about issues of people maintaining quite operation.

The flow they recommend is what the pump is capable of before head loss.

What size reefer do you have?

I have a reefer 450 with the reefer sump setup so total volume is 119 gallon give or take for rock and equipment.

 

[Cheddah93]

I would try putting a ball valve on the return and try dialing it back just a little bit, reccomended flow is 260gph less than what you have.

That’s be a cheap way to start and hopefully it’ll work. I have exactly the reccomended flow on mine and haven’t had a single issue with the syncra pump.

 

[mvallee]

I would try putting a ball valve on the return and try dialing it back just a little bit, reccomended flow is 260gph less than what you have.

That’s be a cheap way to start and hopefully it’ll work. I have exactly the reccomended flow on mine and haven’t had a single issue with the syncra pump.

thanks, I thought this was the recommended size, bought tank used. I will give dialing back a shot.

 

[Cheddah93]

Any luck on dialing it back a little bit?

 

[mvallee]

Any luck on dialing it back a little bit?

Thanks for checking in!
not yet, I plan on playing with that this weekend, I did figure out a big part of my issue though. I have a couple different algae types in my tank right now bryopsis and some kind of red turf algae UGH!! that were blocking the lower portion of the openings in the overflow, the sides were clear and I naively thought that would be enough. I took those combs out and cleaned them up and this has greatly minimized the issue, as opposed to a gurgling/surging it is now a slight overflow sound I am dealing with now and I am working at dialing that in.
Once I cleared the combs the sump level rose by a good 3 inches so was definitely impeding flow causing the DT to run higher than normal and I assume once it backed up enough overflow the algae buildup causing the gurgling.
I am still going to tweak the flow level down just so it is not at that max level the overflow can handle

 

[Cheddah93]

Slowly is key with these overflow valves, turn the valve 1 click and give it a good half hour to hour to settle down and they seem to always dial in nicely.

You might be able to get away with the oversized return pump since you’ve cleaned the blockage and gained headway there. It was just a suggestion of dialing back after doing some reading of my own where others were having the problem. I feel they do under rate the overflows a little bit for ease with people who haven’t dealt with them before.

Best of luck!