Tips to building a quieter reef tank

By Mark van der Wal on Feb 06, 2013

Having an aquarium in your home should be a relaxing and tranquil gesture. But once you delve into reefing, things get quite loud. Reef aquariums are usually heavy on equipment and plumbing, and both can transform a peaceful space into a distracting concert of sounds. Suprisingly, finding a centralized reference for silencing a reef is rather hard. So let’s do it here.

The Noisy Overflow:

Silencing an overflow is actually a straightforward thing. The most effective way of doing this is using the Herbie and Baggie Method combined. Reef-ready tanks come with two drilled holes. One is usually 1″ and the other 1/2 to 3/4″. The Herbie Method eliminates noise by eliminating air from the drain in the first place. The basic premise is that you utilize both drilled holes in your overflow as standpipe drains. The wider hole will be the main drain.

The trick is adding a gate valve before the sump, and closing it with small 1/4″ turns till the water remains an 1″ or so above standpipe while still draining. The standpipe should be high enough that water entering the overflow doesn’t have to fall far. The smaller standpipe is your backup, in case the gate valve drain clogs. The smaller standpipe needs to be higher than the main standpipe.

Gate valve on the main drain, and a backup drain

By utilizing a gate valve to raise the water slightly, you eliminate the noise of bubbles entering your sump. And the taller standpipes will reduce the splash noises, because water will not have far to fall. But even a few inches will cause a noticeable splash. This is where the Baggie method comes into play….

The Baggie method simply entails loosely zip tying some ziplocs to the top of your overflow teeth. The bag is allowed to sit downward in the overflow, which ensures the overflow water runs down between the bag and inner overflow wall.

Ziplocs eliminate those splash noises.

Both of these methods fall under “TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK”. Ensure that your backup standpipe can handle all the flow from your return pump. And ensure that the bags don’t somehow seal off the overflow teeth.

What about the return? Now that the return pump bulkhead has been repurposed as a backup drain, the return pump plumbing requires a little more DIY. It’s not that hard to just plumb it over the lip of the tank.

Loud equipment:

This one is easier to fix on a new build, because buying the right gear is 90% of winning the noise battle. The main culprits are pumps, skimmers, and cooling fans.

First off, internal pumps and skimmers are usually more quiet. Stay away from loud beasts like Mag Drives. Askol-based pumps are renowned for their silence. Sicce and Tunze are silent as well. Make sure your skimmer and return pump fall in these category of brands. To quiet existing return pumps, look for silicone square pot grippers at your local kitchenware store. They are ideal to place under pumps to reduce vibrational noise.

Thin rubber vibration mats can be sourced through car audio vendors and also as washing machine dampeners. Adding such a mat between your sump and aquarium stand will further reduce vibrational hum. And if you are a fan of hard pvc plumbing, make sure to include a small section of vinyl or silicone hose between the pvc and your return pump. This will also cut vibration.

Most Aquarium stands are wide open in the back. This is a good thing for reducing potential humidity issues from your sump and related filtration. Some folks opt to close it up with plywood(sealed and painted), and use a small computer fan to remove stale air. Enclosing the stand keeps the noise inside. While you’re at it, line the inner sides and doors of your stand with thin closed cell foam. It’s easy to source from Car Audio places as well. Honestly, soundproofing your stand is probably overkill if you choose your equipment wisely.

Soundproofed stand sporting a sump running a Tunze Silence return pump and Sicce-powered skimmer

Loud fans are tricky. If the fans are in a name-brand light fixture, you should not mess with them unless you have some electrical background. And you are probably risking the warranty as well. Ultimately, it’s probably smarter to look for a better designed fixture. If it’s canopy fans in question, there are many really quiet computer fans available these days which work great for canopy cooling as well.

Noise, especially vibrational hum, can be extremely distracting from a beautiful reef tank. Good planning and a little DIY can eliminate the noise and bring the focus back on the fish and coral. If you have any additional noise reduction tips, we’d love to hear about them in the comments or the reefbuilder forum!

Posted in Marquee-lite, Reef News |
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XD_1

I thought the right way to run a Herbie was to use the small pipe for the siphon drain and the big one for the backup?
gmacreef

Putting plastic bags in your overflow looks like a good way to clog your pipes and flood your house.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1723102577 Bobby Melton

I use a durso high in the overflow box and run the drain line to the bottom of the sump. For the return, I drill a hole in the corner of a 90 right after the lock line and glue rigged air line tubing and cut it off between the running level and the idle level.

Everything else is “play it by ear” lol
Openuris

The Eheim compact+ pumps are as silent as the Tunze silence and run a bit cheaper. Also, try not to push your overflow at max if you aren’t running it at a full siphon. If you can keep your flow down to about 1/2 of rated flow, you maintain a laminar water flow around the outside of the pipe/tubing with an air channel in the center. Too much flow and you collapse the channel and get a flushing or gurgling sound. This is really common on horizontal overflows.
Openuris

If you are running the smaller drain at full siphon and the large one to handle the excess that the siphon cannot, then this should be a better way to do it. If you can’t maintain a full siphon in the smaller line, it’s probably going to be loud.
jretz

One other key to the Herbie method is to be sure the sump end of your drain pipe remains underwater as well. If it starts sucking up air because its above the water line the whole thing will become noisy.
TerenceF

Ziploc bags in the overflow is a RB recommendation… I can’t say for sure it is good or bad, but it certainly does not look like state of the art reefkeeping.
simon Villeneuve

DC pump for returns and skimmer….
Love my beanie overflow
Mike

Fake corals, so less flow is needed, maybe even reducing the sump option all together
SalF

Tips to building a quieter reef tank and not one mention of the Bean Animal Overflow System???…its dead quiet & simple to make. That paired with WaterBlaster Pumps = close to dead silence as possible.
Curtis Kramer

I use some plastic mesh that you can find in the sewing section of any walmart. It’s cheap, it lets water through, it works as a partial filter, and it works in the same way the bag would.

P.S. it’s the same stuff that is filtering the water going into the standpipes in the ziplock pic.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jonathon-Gordon/11310867 Jonathon Gordon

You could always just leave the fish and the water out as well and just leave it as dry fake corals with LED lights over them. Terrestrial plants are silent as well.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=508021671 Albert Dao

Because it’s more or less a herbie + additional pipes? Let’s be clear, the beanimal overflow isn’t silent +3 or anything, it’s increased redundancy on an already redundant method.
SalF

That’s not correct, the bean animal overflow is dead silent. It also has the third emergency standpipe as a safety backup which is all the better. It really is the best possible way to plumb your system if silence efficiently and safety are something you strive for.
Jon Hahn

The Bean Overflow is only “needed” if you have a shallow overflow box. It is the same as a dual standpipe (recently repopularized as the “Herbie”) but with a redundant pair of backup pipes. If you have a Herbie and a tall enough overflow box (12″ or more), you will see no benefit from a Bean-flow. In fact, the “durso”-ish pipe that the Beananimal method uses will generate more noise than a Herbie. I know silent and high-efficiency reef setups. I wrote many articles about it a decade ago. Plumbing hasn’t changed much in the past 10 years.
Jon Hahn

One mistake in the article above: you want the Herbie to use the smaller pipe as the “primary” drain with the larger pipe being used as the “backup”.
SalF

I havnt read your articles from 10 years ago but i can tell you my beananimal setup with a coast to coast overflow is dead silent and as flood proof as you can get. I also feel like the standars overflows of the generic reef ready tanks are a space waster. I guess its a matter of opinion, but some things like the dead silence and flood proof redundancy are just undeniable fact that i witness everday. So dont knock it give it a try and you will be amazed at great this set up works
Jon Hahn

I have seen it, tried it, etc. It offers no advantage over a Herbie and can actually create more noise (on average, by design). It is more likely that you will achieve “dead-silence” with a Herbie or dual standpipe and the flood proofing is just as good.
The weakness in the Beananimal is the 2nd pipe which acts just like a Durso when it has water running through it. The mix of air and water, and falling water will always create noise.
I can see the use of a bean-style overflow: when you have limited height for the overflow box, then it makes more sense. The Herbie is a better choice when you have at least 12″ of height to work with.

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