Noisy bean animal return

pixelhustler · Feb 3, 2024

I recently bought an Innovative Marine tank with the bean animal return pictured below. Every few days after adjusting the valve, the return becomes noisy. The sweet spot between the main return and the emergency returns is pretty narrow.

Can I make any modifications to solve this? My previous tank had a much less sophisticated overflow with a lifereef silencer (coupler + airline tubing run all the way down the return) and was significantly quieter.

Troylee · Feb 5, 2024

Gate valve or ball valve? You can try cutting down your main siphon down an inch or so that might help.

Doctorgori · Feb 5, 2024

just curious, you got a DC pump? constant flow or variable flow? is the skimmer shutting off at night.

MartyK · Feb 5, 2024

Which pipe in that picture is the main drain line?

pixelhustler · Feb 6, 2024

Troylee said:
Gate valve or ball valve? You can try cutting down your main siphon down an inch or so that might help.

Ball valve. I thought about changing it to a gate valve but I’m able to tune the return pretty well. The problem is keeping my water level stable.

Doctorgori said:
just curious, you got a DC pump? constant flow or variable flow? is the skimmer shutting off at night.

Cheap DC pump, which might be the issue. It does get clogged with detritus as I’m battling some algae that makes it to the sump do that might be the issue. The gap between drain lines is still very small for margin of error. Maybe they cut the pipes too long from the factory.

MartyK said:
Which pipe in that picture is the main drain line?

It’s the pipe on the right, which has a weird siphon going on. IM says it’s their own custom style of bean animal. I’m not super familiar with these type of returns.