Increase water flow in overflow

I broke out the teeth in my old 500g. I replaced it with a plastic mesh type stuff and it flowed much better. Depending on your tools and skills you could try to widen the gap between the teeth or maybe take out every other one. Good news is they should snap right off relatively easily

You need to install a ball vlave between your pump and tank to regulate the output back to the tank.

Instead of restricting the flow from the pump, you can bleed the excess water back I to the sump.

I use a t piece off the input with a ball valve allowing me to adjust how much I bleed back to the sump

Lgw said:

Instead of restricting the flow from the pump, you can bleed the excess water back I to the sump.

I use a t piece off the input with a ball valve allowing me to adjust how much I bleed back to the sump

Click to expand...

Hmmmm, might try that one

The T-valve is a great idea. I have done that with my sump. Also gives you a bit more flexibility. You can run a UV off it, create new return pipes to the tank, etc etc.


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What kind of overflow do you have? Depending on your style overflow you can try this. This is what I did and to what part of the overflow. I got the pvc tube that determines the water height of the box out side of the tank and shortened it and it works perfectly. (Careful not to shorten it too much or you will never have suction and need a new piece of pvc)

I had the exact same problem as both pvc tubes that extent up weren't being fully submerged leading to reduced flow. To test this just play with the overflow box's pvc pipes that dictate the water flow. Remove it completely and see if it can handle the flow. If you remove the pvc tubes and the U tube looses suction then you can just shorten it and achieve your desired flow rate.

But if it loses suction you might overflow the tank so keep the sump with less water so the pump runs dry or make sure you can turn off the pump in time. It would be helpful as what gph pump you have and the overflow drain sizes! But shortening the pvc tubes usually works for all the overflow's I have, I even had to add some more U tubes to compensate for the flow. the cheap way I do it is just use flexible 3/4 inch tubing but one factory plastic U tube can handle around 600gph if I'm not mistaken.