Marina breeder box.. Shaddaaaaap

[StephenP2003]

My bristlenose are having babies again, so I decided to be proactive about it this time. I pulled out my marina (now branded with parent company fluval) breeder box, and boy do I remember why I put it away in the first place. The air lift is so obnoxious with the constant gurgling. There are a few solutions online to cut down on the noise, but for me, the path to silence was to ditch the air completely and use a submersible pump. 

The perfect solution turned out to be a cheap USB powered pump and 1/4 inch tubing.

The pump flow is sufficiently weak, and reduced further with a piece of foam in the outlet. Now, considering this is a white label product and very inexpensive, reliability will be a consideration. Fingers crossed it keeps running. 

 

Surely another company has a better design for this type of box? I can tolerate some noises in the fish room, but this thing was bad. 

[Andy's Fish Den]

Yes, I find the noise from the air gurgling as the one fault of these boxes. 

[Errk25]

I have the Marina medium breeder box model #10942 that you attach an airline too and it works great. Never noticed any noise at all from it with the other sounds in my little fish room. 
 

[StephenP2003]

58 minutes ago, Errk25 said:

I have the Marina medium breeder box model #10942 that you attach an airline too and it works great. Never noticed any noise at all from it with the other sounds in my little fish room. 
 

This is what I heard on mine:

 

[Errk25]

1 hour ago, StephenP2003 said:

This is what I heard on mine:

 

Wow! That would be annoying. Wonder what was different with mine? 

[pedrofisk]

It doesn't bother me but I like your solution. I also have them running in the laundry room so who cares. I do think they are the best of the different boxes on the market.

[Bill Smith]

16 minutes ago, pedrofisk said:

It doesn't bother me but I like your solution. I also have them running in the laundry room so who cares. I do think they are the best of the different boxes on the market.

I agree, I don't find it that loud. But I do think water level really matters too. Mine are noisy when the water level isn't all the way at the top. The gurgling changes to larger bubble sounds.

[Cory]

Just like sponge filters, flow is key here, the slower the flow, meaning the bubbles won't crash into each other, the less gurgling/sound you'll have at the end. Very small amounts of water need to move through the container, most people have them roaring lol. 

Also being that the purpose is to change out the water, you could have the air pump set to a timer to turn on for say 1 hour a day to do 100% water change etc. 

[StephenP2003]

18 hours ago, Cory said:

Just like sponge filters, flow is key here, the slower the flow, meaning the bubbles won't crash into each other, the less gurgling/sound you'll have at the end. Very small amounts of water need to move through the container, most people have them roaring lol. 

Also being that the purpose is to change out the water, you could have the air pump set to a timer to turn on for say 1 hour a day to do 100% water change etc. 

Yep, good point. Slowing the air/water down to a trickle does alleviate the sound (and the water pump silences it completely) -- I tend to get overly annoyed with certain sounds. Years ago I spent a grand on custom water cooling in my gaming PC just so I wouldn't hear all the little fans ramp up. 

Right now I have pleco fry in there, and they never stop eating, so I just had it in my head that I need lots and lots of flow in there to keep the water relatively clean.