How loud is your aquarium???

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How loud is your aquarium???

  • Dead silent...Can't hear a thing

    Votes: 1 2.7%
  • Almost completely silent. Have to listen very closely to hear it

    Votes: 16 43.2%
  • A little noisey to where it can be heard from anywhere within the room it is in

    Votes: 14 37.8%
  • Quite noisy as it can be heard over the television

    Votes: 6 16.2%
  • Rediculously noisey!! Can be heard from the next room!

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    37

Krish

RF STAFF
Joined
Oct 22, 2004
Messages
25,290
Location
Nassau, Bahamas
I've had setups that drowned out my television at times :lol:. Main culprit was the chiller. Another setup, return pump hummed like crazy and I had to put padding etc under it to try muffle the sound. Even went so far as putting a back on my stand which I ended up removing because of heat LOL! Curious to see how people rate their tanks in terms of noise. If you like, you can list what is causing you the most noise. Might come in handy for others considering certain pieces of equipment like for eg, magdrive pumps. I've used some that made me want to pitch them because of the hum they put off! :shock:
 
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My current tank is between a little and quite noisy.

Most of the sound is from the overflow. You can hear the water drop into the overflow blow and banging down the piping. I am going to swap out the had pvc with 3 90 degree fittings to flexible pipe to see if that helps a bit.
There is also a bit of noise from the Mag 7 return pump.

I work from home (the tank is in my home office) and spend a lot of time on the phone. When I first set up the tank I thought it was way too loud (much louder than the BC29 it replaced). Since then, I've gotten used to it.
 
Herbie drain, Eheim return pump and SWC skimmer make this system totally silent. The only thing we hear is when it gets really hot outside in the summer we have to kick the 4 computer fans in the canopy into high gear (they are adjustable with 3 speed settings) and then we can hear them hum.
 
durso standpipes and i cant hear a thing. i use to hear my vortec but i sold it and bought a tunze:biggrin:
 
My return pump is noisier than I care for. I finally got the overflow box quiet by placing a little peice of plexiglass inside it so the water flows down the sides instead of waterfalling down like it normally does. Thinking about replacing the return pump with an eheim. I have one of their canister filters and it is dead silent.
 
When both the Day and Atinics are running the cooling fans are the loudest, outside of that hums low like light back ground water falls.
 
I dont beleive there is such a thing as a dead silent reef tank.
Even with a remote tank room I could hear a hum with the 210. IM one of those people that can hear a pin drop form 100 yards though.
When I was pushing near 20,000GPH it made a pretty good hum. The CL (remote pump)hummed The MJ mod added to it, the Vortech added to it and even when I got rid of everything and bought two new tunze's you could hear them ramping up and down. I loved them but they, of all things reef related drove my wife crazy

My 210 FW planted tank is dead silent with a remote return pump only and herbie overflows. Only 5.7x turnover though.
 
All of my equipment/pumps are in the garage and I can still hear a hum.
 
My tanks could probably be quieter if I worked on them a little, but it hasnt been a priority.....yet..One of them is pretty quiet, one is heard over the tv cause I think I need to clean the skimmer pump again and the other one needs to have the bigger sump put in place. The overflow is kinda noisy on that one, otherwise they are not too bad.
Now that you made me really think about it, I am going to be a little busy this weekend!
 
Ours is fairly noisey. We run a canister filter and it's super quiet. It's the skimmer that kills us. Also, we picked up some lighting that has MD's and they are failry noisey - more so the lights than the fans (I think). We have so much going on in the house at any given time so really it's not noticed except for first thing in the morning when I walk downstairs.
 
A remote fish room sure helps! LEDs have two very quiet fans... Only really hear the MP40s but I run those at about 70% on reef crest mode. The varying speed of the power heads is audible but if I ran constant it would be barely audible. Got to get those tuned in though or they will make more noise than I would tolerate in a quiet living room.
 
All 3 nano tanks are on the quite side when everything is running. Lights, fans etc. And at night when the fans and lights are out, you really need to listen and you can hear the ever slight hum from the maxijet skimmer pumps.
I am hoping with my newest 65H tank it will be D-E-A-D silent. At least I can hope that all my planning makes it that way.
 
LOL, I guess in this case, tank size will play a huge factor. With a little nano running only a couple small powerheads the noise will be very minimal. With a 150-300 gallon display, having huge pumps for cuirculation and bigger skimmers will always generate a bit of noise no matter how far away the tank room is.
 
mine is near silent...
the skimmer is near silent, the tunze pump for flow and the eheim for a return pump are both very quiet,
and there is no gurgle from my plumbing. all i hear is a faint hum from the pumps.
 
My answer would depend on which room you are in. You have to really listen to hear it in the living room (the room you view the tank from). But on the back side in the office it is easily heard, but not overly noisy. Main noise is the cooling fans (but those are gone when my LEDs get here (hopefully this week) and a little hum from pumps (skimmer, return and closed loop). When the AC is running in that room on warmer days it is noiser than the tank!
 
My current tank is between a little and quite noisy.

Most of the sound is from the overflow. You can hear the water drop into the overflow blow and banging down the piping. I am going to swap out the had pvc with 3 90 degree fittings to flexible pipe to see if that helps a bit.
There is also a bit of noise from the Mag 7 return pump.

I work from home (the tank is in my home office) and spend a lot of time on the phone. When I first set up the tank I thought it was way too loud (much louder than the BC29 it replaced). Since then, I've gotten used to it.
I swapped out my hard pvc drain for flexible pipe yesterday. Now the tank is down to a little noisy. What a change more direct routing makes!
 
Dave,

so you have something like a durso pipe in the overflow?

It has a baffle system, so the water flows down the sides of the box, then under the partitions into the middle where the overflow pipe is. It's the gl*******s.com 700gph system.
 

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