I decided, due to the shear amount of noise generated from the water fall coming down the pipes, to go with a siphon drain system with 2 drains.
What are the disadvantages of this design?
What are the advantages, besides a completely silent tank?
I understand that there are other ways to make a tank less loud, however, I am willing to bet there is no other way to make a tank much quieter then this. I tried the Durso, etc this time as well as with my last tank, and even though I could get the top quiet, the bottom was like a hot tub. Anyways, here are some pics.
Here is the tank from the front. This is without the top installed. With the top on, the return (shown at the top of the picture) will go through the back and into the water.
This is the return from the side. The black bulkhead is where it plumbing will tie into the canopy.
Looking into the sump. Top Center of the door you can see the drains. The one on the left is the primary, the one on the right is the emergency drain.
Better view of the drains. The one with the gate valve is the primary drain.
Here is the input to the refugium. It comes from a tee that connects it to the main drain. THere is a gate valve to slow the flow in the refug waaaaay down.
Here are the two drains. It's hard to tell, but the primary drain (on the left) is about 3 inches lower then the emergency drain (on the right).
All these images are shown with the ViaAqua 3600 running unrestricted except for the elbows, tee, pipe length and head. My last test calculated the flow at a little more then 600 GPH.
Nasty!
Pre-stain Pics:
