How do I keep a sump quiet?

I am building a new reef ready 65G and I am going to be using a sump for the 1st time. I keep hearing horror stories about how much noise they can make. What are tips to keep them quiet cause I hate water noise and my house is small so I don't have anywhere to hide!

 

A quite return pump helps. I changed from a noisy Danner Mag 9.5 to a much quieter Ocean Runner 2500.

 

I heard that Eheim is a good quiet pump also

 

Pretty much all the DC pumps are nearly silent. More flow through the return in a normal system usually means more noise so it's nice with DC pumps to be able to press a button and adjust the flow. They also use very little power. If not a DC pump us a valve on return.
Avoid horizonal and completely vertical pipes the best you can.

 

I use an herbie overflow, eheim pump and aquamedic blue turboflotor protein skimmer and my sump is pretty much silent. I have it in my bedroom and you can barely notice it. I would recommend that set up. It took me a while to figure out the plumbing to where you didn't hear any water movement noise. This is what I ended up with.

 

Silencing the overflow/standpipe is pretty easy with many DIY options out there. I prefer to keep it simple so use the Stocman standpipe design and it has worked quite well for 11 years now with zero issues.
There are return pumps that are definitely better than others such as Ocean Runner, Eheim and WaterBlaster to name just a few that are AC powered and there are more and more DC variable speed pumps coming out all the time.
Plumbing can be made silent too, I use a mixture of PVC and reinforced vinyl tubing so it breaks up any vibrations and sound from the pumps that can be an issue with rigid PVC alone.
The tough one is always the skimmer, by design they can be quite noisy just because of the what they do and the way they operate. I don't really know if any are quieter than others.

 

+1000 on the DC pumps. I used to have a garage sump with a big old barracuda pump. great water mover, not efficient or anywhere close to quiet. I bought a Jebao DC6000 and now use it for my return in my new system with the sump under the stand. that thing is Dead silent. and super easy to control. WOW.

 

In addition to a quiet return pump.. Make sure you plumb drains and skimmer lines so they don't stop above the water level in your sump. Evaporation is my only problem, when water level drops I hear a waterfall until I top it off again, which an ATO would maintain the water level in the sump. Hope this helps

 

I'll add that it helps to find the sweet spot with the return pipes into the sump - I have mine just below the water line - this way the air gets out fast and does not cause a lot of gurgling. This takes experimenting, but it is time well spent. Some use ramps as well.

 

most of the time when I have a noisy overflow it is because i'm trying to force more water through the pipe than it was built for and get alot of splashing and gurgling. If you get an appropriate sized return pump or throttle your return pump down until your overflow is quiet it makes a huge difference. I love and use both the herbie and bean animal overflows and they are dead silent.