Surging Drain

J

jgosdin00

I just filled my tank up with water and the refugium as well and when i turned the pump on it pushed the water up like normal but then the dorso pipe area in the RR tank started surging ( filling up and then draining to the end of the drain pipe where it curves and then doing it all over ) probably every 5 seconds or less. How do I stop this for a normal cascading flow and drain to the refugium? I appreciate your time responding?
 
That's usually a sign that not enough air is getting into the durso, so it's acting like a toilet bowl. If you have a vent hole drilled in the top of your stand pipe, you may need to make it a little bigger.
 
Gramalkin, I drilled the hole a little bigger and it helped but it is still doing it. Should I just drill an additional wholeor two in the top of the dorso pipe or just continue to drill the single whole wider?
 
if you take the cap off, does it still make the flushing effect? I had to keep drilling the hole bigger and bigger till I got it to stop. Start small and if you think your durso hole is too big, try making another smaller hole next to it. it took me about half an hour of drilling holes to stop the flushing effect.
 
nti555, igot the surging to stop but now i have a rather loud gurgiling sound. fix one problem and get another one. any ideas? i appreciate it.
 
Do you have a ball valve on return? If so you can dial it down till gurgling goes away.
 
I am running the mag 9.5 for the return straight right now. Is there any way to fix it without or am I going to have to add a ball valve?
 
Durso standpipes will always add air to the drain line. That is why you have a loud sump. To correct mines I added a T shaped pipe to the end of my drain line. It allowed the bubbles to escape through the side and the rest of the water went straight down. It stopped the bubbling effect but I still had to control the flow with ball valves. Once I adjusted the ball valve like Kuyatwo mentioned above, it got extremely quiet.

Edit:
I re-read your post. Is you water level constantly beneath the intake of the durso or does it sit half way? I only get the gurgling noise if the drain is sucking in water too fast and water isn't coming into the overflow quick enough.
 
The sound is coming from the dorso pipe with the three holes around the side and then the air lone on top. It is like the pipe can't get enough water to go through it bit the water line is half way across the curve part of the top of the dorso pipe. There is plenty of water from what I can tell. It just keeps making the gurgling sound up top.
 
I had the same problem. I was advised to put an aquarium air line into the whole on top of the pipe and play with how far to put it down into the pipe. Helped a lot.
 
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