Pain Devine,
When I set up my 1st salt water aquarium (all glass 55
gal) I didn't want to mess with a syphon, drilling the glass, or a sump. I went with an elaborate
DIY mechanical monstrosity of a filtration system. I used a common plastic home water filter canister. I used a common, coarse filter element (sediment filter). When the element expired, I cut away the filter material and was left with a plastic core. I went to a fabric store and purchased a bulk bag of sheet polyfil. I wrapped it arround the core and wrapped kite string to bind it. Presto!!! a
DIY canister filter !!! You can find these water filter canisters cheap on Ebay. Plumb it with
PVC, use a sponge prefilter.
I plumbed mine: out of the tank, down the back, to a pump, to the canister filter, through my
UV sterilizer, and back into the tank.
I hated it with a passion
, you have no idea how much of a pain in the butt it was to unscrew the canister to change the element. I ended up remounting this system to a piece of plywood that could be pulled out from behind the tank to make it a little easier. Sometimes I let it go without changing the filter so long that I hardly didn't have any flow. Stinky
I ditched the elaborate mechanical filtration, went with a syphon overflow, cheaper than dirt filter sock (simple to change, you can even make them!!!), and an acrylic sump off of Ebay (shop a lot great prices). I love it so much. This is such a relief, simple to maintain, no restriction of pump flow, and the plumbing was easier. A little tricky at first but simplistic.
What you have to do is use a good size sump. Too big isn't necessarily bad. It sounds like you need to restrict the flow a little on the outer box of your syphon overflow. This may sound strange, but it works and silences it a lot. You may have to fiddle with the height of your surface skimmer. If necessary, shim up the whole syphon overflow and move the surface skimmer portion down. This makes a big difference. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just ask. I think you can get it to work reliably.