Quietest filtration for a 550?

[Chicxulub]

This is something I never really considered before, but it is suddenly at the center of things for me with my new 550. In the past, I'd set up my tanks in a spare room and call it good. Noise wasn't a concern since they were off the beaten path so to speak.

Well, this 550 is going to be a centerpiece in the living room of the new house I'm building, so I don't really want the thing to be too horrendously loud.

I suppose I could just run plumbing over to the garage and run a giant sump in over there, but that's 60 some feet from the tank, and I suspect that would get expensive really quick. I'd rather keep the filtration under the tank if possible.

The obvious answer to keep it quiet seems to be to have a bunch of canisters on a closed loop, but they're expensive on a per unit basis and a pita for maintenance. It would accomplish my aim for being filtered but quiet.

Now a sump would be the obvious choice for handling 550 gallons of fish, but every sump I've seen has been fairly noisy, and I'm not quite sure what would need to be done to work around that problem short of sticking it in the garage, which I don't really want to do.

I suppose having a giant reactor right outside of the house (the tank will be against an external wall) may be an option, but I live on the FL/GA line so it gets bloody HOT here.

I'm really stepping up my game by breaking the 500 gallon barrier finally, and I find myself in unfamiliar territory, especially with my goal of keeping noise to a minimum. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[kno4te]

Bean animal overflow works well and quiet.

 

[dan518]

Hmf using power heads, not sure how much space inside the tank your willing to loose.
Ultima bead filters, the ones i have seen seemed quite, but might be different running in your front room.

 

[Rob909]

Soundproofing foam in your stand will help a bit. You’ll still need to quiet it down as much as possible though. I have filter sponge between the chambers in my sump so I don’t get the loud trickling in the stand. The overflow is the tricky one to get quiet. I use filter sponge there to and it slows the flow down enough to reduce the gargle a bit. It’s not perfect but it helps.

Edit: I also use a filter sock on the first chamber instead of a trickle tower. I put the intake hose below the water level so I don’t get the sloshing from the water coming in.

 

[duanes]

Does the house have a basement? Along with bean animal overflows, I have seen some cases where sumps are put in the basement, so most of the moving water, and pump hum is there in the floor below.
Water return movement sound could be aimed under the surface of the main tank to minimize sound.
I also put foam insulation around PVC pipes to minimize vibration against hard surfaces.

 

[esoxlucius]

My 180 is in the living room and although it's not absolutely silent it is reasonably quiet. It took a lot of jiggery pokery and tinkering to get it as I wanted it. However, the turnover of flow in my 180 will be nothing compared to the flow going on in your 550 and that could be a problem, especially if it is essential that your system is ultra quiet.

If your house is in the very early stages of construction how feasible is it to tweak it a bit and have a partitioned sump room built in. That way you'd have a guaranteed silent system and you could also use your sump room for a dedicated fish related store room.

 

[JK47]

I’ve built 4K flow on tanks you couldn’t tell were running standing in front of them. It’s possible but takes careful planning. The overflow design (herbie, bean animal, hybrid etc), keeping the overflow lines submerged as they go to the sump, foam in the stand and a rubber mat under the pump make for a silent setup that is fairly “scale able”.

None of which are more costly or hard to do, just require planning.

 

[kendragon]

I have a closed loop system with an external pump. The pump is pretty quite but the splashing from the return into the tank is pretty loud. I guess you can put the return below water but won't get the benefit of aeration.

 

[pescado209]

submerge your overflow just under the water line in your sump.

did that with the 210 in the living room. the wavemakers make more "buzz" that the sump. even then you can bearly notice any noise.

 

[Chicxulub]

Thanks for the feedback y'all!

I gather the consensus is that the returns from the tank into the sump should be under the water level in the sump. That makes sense, and I'm embarrassed to admit it never occurred to me lol.

The soundproofing of the stand makes sense as well. I intend for the tank to be built into the side of the house, so insulating it should be fairly easy.

I'm starting to like the idea of having the sump plumbed into a dedicated filter room as esoxlucius suggested, though the house doesn't have a basement as duanes mentioned, which is unfortunate because it would be ideal.

I could potentially put at least some of the filtration right outside of the wall the tank is on, or I could maybe have that area enclosed. I don't really want to enclosed it however, because it will send the house back into engineering which will be expensive and time consuming.



Idk.

I guess just I'm brainstorming publicly at this point. I'd like to put either the filtration or at least a big old water tank right outside of the house there to help increase my total volume, but I'm concerned about overheating the system in these dirty southern summers.

Ugh.

Nevermind everything I've said with my concerns, please just give me ideas so I can pick one and go with it. I have too many options and I'm overthinking it.

Things that will happen for sure: ro/di, drip system, and my Wlim glass bead filter with a 1/2 hp pump. Just trying to figure out if my bear bet is battery of canisters, sump, reactor or something combo.

(Y'all should have seen me trying to decide between the 8x3x3 and a 11x2.5x2.5, it was an unmitigated disaster that took three months lmao)