dangles
Valuable Member
I'm experiencing a weird "surging" or "pulsating" flow on my new build. Here are the details (sorry in advance for the length)...
I just set up a 120 gallon tank with an external overflow and a 40 gallon sump. I've went with a Bean Animal filter. I used 1" plumbing for all 3 drains, and both returns. I have a gate valve on the primary drain, which runs into a filter roller in the first chamber. The secondary runs into the first chamber (not through the roller). The emergency drain runs into the sump area.
Initially I was wanting to run dual return pumps. I did some rough flow calcs and went with dual Vectra M2 pumps, one feeding each return. I figured after flow loss from head/friction, these would work fine on lower settings (rather than running smaller pumps at high power). I was wrong. Two M2 pumps on their LOWEST settings provided WAY too much flow. The primary drain all the way open PLUS the secondary drain barely kept up with the flow. I pulled one of the pumps, so now I only have a single M2. But this still seems to too much flow. My primary drain is at full siphon, and the secondary is still getting a LOT of flow. TONS of water is making its way through the secondary drain. It's SUPER noisy.
On top of that, the flow is slowly "pulsing." The amount of water in the overflow box increases steadily, makes a "gushing" sound as it apparently "flushes" down the secondary drain, and then goes down rapidly. Then that cycle repeats. The flow down the primary drain seems to remain steady. It's the secondary drain that seems to be responsible.
I thought maybe I was still getting too much flow so I put a ball valve on each return to back down the overall flow a little more. This helped some, but I'm still getting the surging/flushing flow.
Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong? I'll add some photos of my setup shortly.
I just set up a 120 gallon tank with an external overflow and a 40 gallon sump. I've went with a Bean Animal filter. I used 1" plumbing for all 3 drains, and both returns. I have a gate valve on the primary drain, which runs into a filter roller in the first chamber. The secondary runs into the first chamber (not through the roller). The emergency drain runs into the sump area.
Initially I was wanting to run dual return pumps. I did some rough flow calcs and went with dual Vectra M2 pumps, one feeding each return. I figured after flow loss from head/friction, these would work fine on lower settings (rather than running smaller pumps at high power). I was wrong. Two M2 pumps on their LOWEST settings provided WAY too much flow. The primary drain all the way open PLUS the secondary drain barely kept up with the flow. I pulled one of the pumps, so now I only have a single M2. But this still seems to too much flow. My primary drain is at full siphon, and the secondary is still getting a LOT of flow. TONS of water is making its way through the secondary drain. It's SUPER noisy.
On top of that, the flow is slowly "pulsing." The amount of water in the overflow box increases steadily, makes a "gushing" sound as it apparently "flushes" down the secondary drain, and then goes down rapidly. Then that cycle repeats. The flow down the primary drain seems to remain steady. It's the secondary drain that seems to be responsible.
I thought maybe I was still getting too much flow so I put a ball valve on each return to back down the overall flow a little more. This helped some, but I'm still getting the surging/flushing flow.
Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong? I'll add some photos of my setup shortly.
