If you look at the first couple pages of my tank journal thread, there are fairly detailed pics of all the parts and the plumbing. It is really a stupidly simply design,but silent and virtually foolproof. If you have any questions feel free to pm me.

"Bow Valley Aquatics.
Mine will be done on Monday and I can let you know how it goes.

He has all the plumbing parts you need at the shop as well - not to mention a 3 foot grand cayman alligator in a massive tank just to show off how good he is."

It sounds like you could have got your questions answered from these guys.

L

Yeah, Im just gathering multiple opinions so I can form my own for what works best with my situation.

How can I navigate to your build thread? I checked out the links in your sig and saw your tank of the month, which is gorgeous I might add, but not a build thread?

Here you go http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=40669

Ok, so I got word from the shop I can pick up the tank tomorrow so I need to figure out my plumbing sorta soon. Not really super soon because I am actually gone all of next week and potentially wont begin filling/plumbing this beast until around the 19th but we'll see how this week goes if I have time to get live rock curing in the tank or something. It'd be nice.

Anyways, so for a herbie theres just two pipes, one is a standpipe, one is submerged straight pipe right? The submerged takes 95% of water by fine tuning its drain amount with a gate valve and then the other 5% is through the standpipe right? This will make no sound? I guess that 5% just runs down the side of the pipe and makes no sound, correct? I have 2" drains which should easily handle the drainage if one gets even completely blocked

I read this article about it: http://dinardiengineering.com/blog/?p=34 and looked at Fishytime's pics.

A Herbie uses 2 pipes, One low down in the overflow, and one just above the "running" water level. ALL the flow goes through the lower pipe by way of throttling the Gate Valve. If the main drain gets clogged and can not somehow handle the flow, the level will rise to above the 2nd pipes level, thus letting the 2nd pipe drain. This will now cause a large gurgle, because it's a open pipe, which should alert you to "somethings not right with my tank"

I run this style of Herbie on my 150g Coast to Coast overflow and love it. Won't do a Durso again. Some do set theirs up so that the 2nd pipe takes a little trickle of flow. I see nothing wrong with this, other than maybe taking away from total possible 'emergency" flow.

I also have my 2nd drain, the emergency one, to drain with alot of height above my sump. SO even a trickle down my emerg. drain, makes a splashing noise in the sump, which alerts me before the level gets to gurgle height.

Hmm, that sound alarm type of system is a great idea Bandit. I might do that as well. My 2 inch drains can easily handle all the drainage of the system so I can do 100% through the lower drain, I think.

Do you have a screen on the lower drain pipe? Also, is the emergency one still a durso style or is it straight up and down?

Also, if the lower drain takes 100% how do you "manage" the water level in the overflow box? I figured if you let 5% go down the higher drain then you could have the water line in the overflow controlled by the height of that second drain.

There is a gate valve between the lower 'main' drain that allows you to slow the flow... it will take some fiddling to get it to work right, but the basic principle is that head pressure built up in the overflow box by the water sitting above the main drain pipe will equalize the draining of the overflow, maintaining a certain water level above the main drain. The secondary or emergency drain is to alert you that there is an impedance in the flow through the main drain.

What makes a Herbie quiet is the lack of falling water, rather the lack of water mixing with air in a turbulent fashion. No air gets into the main drain pipe, so there is no noise. This system can reduce overflow noise also.

I'm draining a Little Giant 4 through a 1" line, approx 800-900GPH, handles the flow just fine. I do not have a screen on the intakes. Them being straight pipes, if a critter gets in there, just open the gate valve and plop, into the sump he goes.