I really appreciate the help everyone has given me.
Thanks for the tip on the stand pipe idea,Tony, it will work so if nothing else I can do that. (I am about to try it out anyway)

Since I am new to the overflow/sump idea I knew I would make some mistakes, but this has been really frustrating. I feel bad because I was taking it out on my girlfriend. I was in the middle of trying different hole combinations and she called and I wasnt exactly the most talkative guy. OOPS.

I figured this was the one thing in reef aquariums where the science was exact, or at least everyone agreed. Water flows over glass, water enters standpipe, water falls to sump, easy right? Wrong.

Thanks

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How new is this setup and when do you notice the fluctuations? The reason I ask is because when I first set up my 65 gallon I had water level issues when I fed the fish Mysis. (remember that one Tony?) It has since resolved itself, but with some brain storming we came to the conclusion that the fat from the food lubricated my return pump. Thus supercharging it and raising the water level in the tank to the point that the overflow could barely keep up.

If this theory has nothing to do with your issue than I appologize, I didn't quite read the whole thread.

The system is basically completely new. -used tank, used pump, new sump.
I am not having issues with the overflow keeping up, its almost the opposite, the air flow cant keep up.

I have however found what I believe to be an acceptable solution.

I dropped in a plain ol' standpipe like Tony suggested. I trimmed it to about 2" below the glass overflow. As predicted it caused no rise or fall cycles. It was a little louder than I would have perferred but it wasnt to bad. Based on this open stand pipe I added an old strainer from a real old Marineland Penguin filter. This caused nasty sucking sounds. Next experiment involved me drilling out the original pvc cap to accept a 7" length of 1/2" ID vinyl tubing and placed it on the Hoffer standpipe, this was really quiet but had a big problem with reduced flow because of the tubing shoved down the standpipes throat. Hmmmm what next?
Stuck the plain ol' standpipe back in, and just for the fun of it I placed the bell from the stockman/hoffer set up (inverted) over the standpipe water inlet so its opening was flush the the standpipe. This amazingly enough caused the open ended stand pipe to be silent. Dont ask me why. But in watching the water enter the overflow chamber I noticed air bubbles going up inside the inverted stockman/hoffer bell, which worried me because the standpipe is only in the adapter enough to hold it in place and could be dislogded if enough air was trapped inside the bell.
I put the bell on the old drilled stockman standpipe and adjusted it so as the block most of the drilled openings. There you have it, I solved the air bubble issue, solved my rise and fall issue and solved my noise issues.
The only problem I could see is a stupid snail blocking off the open end of the standpipe and cutting off all flow, equaling overflowing tank.
I hope vague descriptions didnt confuse any one.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...8Image0001.jpg

Update: I wasnt happy with my pervious contraption so I set out to build a Durso. This proved to be a fun task seeing as my overflow box is only 4"x4", a standard T and street90ell would not fit.
I basically had to cut the 90 almost in half and remove the enitre middle spout from the T, so it looked like a coupler with a flatened hole in the middle. I then sanded both cuts as square as I could make them. They were ready to go so I used my PVC cement to bond the pieces together. I figured this was where my plan would fail because there was nothing to support the 90 on the T. Well the cement held the 2 pieces together and it is an amazingly strong joint.

This Durso is far superior to my modified stockman. No rise/fall, good flow and even quieter than I had it before. I knew going in that I may have problems with using 1" pvc with a 1" bulkhead (Durso recomends 1 1/4" pvc reduced to the 1" bulkhead) but all seems to be running good.

Can you post a photo? I'm interested how this worked out.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...1Image0001.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...1Image0002.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...1Image0004.jpg

That's a sweeeeet connection. Now that's thinking outside the overflow box. :lol: