D.I.Y Question????

[BCT182]

Okay.... My understanding is a refugium is the samething as a sump right? The point of a sump is having additional water in the system (larger tanks are eaiser to maintain) and to have "ka-ler-pa" that will breed "co-peo-pods" and because the "ka-ler-pa" lowers nitrates? I can't spell right now so I'm sounding out the words :lol:
So, is all I need is a lighted tank and two powerheads with the same gallons per hour hooked to hoses to exchange water from the tank to the sump, and from the sump back to the tank :?: Also.... Should I put anything else in there? Miracle mud, or sand?
Thank you
Brett

 

[Ritsuko Nashida]

You basically got the jist of it all, but thats a little over simplified explaination of it all.

Refugiums serve many purposes, some of which you mentioned. More accurately the point of a sump is filtration, a place to stash all your junk hooked up to your tank so that you will not detract from veiw of the display ( a ugly power head can really kill the ambience of it all as do most skimmers), not only can you hide all your junk in a sump but its much easier to to service/maintain it, and it does in deed give you more water capacity and therfore better water quality stability. Some sumps can have a refugium in them as well. I am not a big fan of these although they do indeed work becuase a sump generally moves water through them at a high flow rate and this is not conduceive to nutrient up take efficiently. Its neither beast or fowl. A dedicated refugium on the other hand will usually have a considerably slower flow rate, this will allow better nutrient up take for macro-algae (for which caulerpa is one type, and not the type I would personally recommend as my first choice for a number of reasons, but none the less is often used and will do the job). It is this enviroment that is a safe havean for copods(sp?), Mysis Shrimp and many others, which will multiply like mad given the chance. It too will give you more water capacity allowing you to have more stable water quality. So there are sumps, sump/refugium combos and refugiums. All a little different in purpose.

At any rate, you will probably need a slightly bigger pump to pump water back to the main display. This is becuase water will have less resistance flowing to a low point such as a sump under the display becuase there is not any head pressure to speak of. On the other hand the pump, pumping water back to a display above will have a good bit of head pressure and therefore have to work much harder to get the same volume back to the display, at least this has been my experience. Might want to think a little more about this before you leap first and look later. Becuase a dedicated refugium generally has lower water flow rates you can use things like Miricale Mud, GARF Grunge Lite, Oolitic sand and the like without it being blow around by water flow. This would be a good thing to add to a refugium if its possible.

For macro-algaes...any of the various types of Caulerpa will work as intended. The downsides are that they have hold fast that will attach to everything in sight making it potentally unmanageable. On top of this it secretes toxins that will impead the growth of any corals you might have which is no big deal in a FO/FOWLR set up. It will also "melt down" on you occasionally sooner or later and in a reef tank with coral would really score high on the "Top Ten Sucks List" to put it mildly. Macro's I would suggest would be "Chaeto", Red Garcalia (sp?) sometimes called Tang Heaven, Red Mangroves( not really a macro-algae but...a nice choice just the same), eel grass if the refugium is kinda deep (15-18 inches of water) and I am sure there are a few more that I didnt specifically mention that would be a sound choice. The Chaeto is nice as Pods will hang out in it big time and reproduce like crazy for you, good for your corals, baby fish if you have any and Manderin Gobies if any. Its easy to grow and very unlikely to melt on you. This will definitely help lower your nitrates too.

In all of my refugiums, and almost all of my tanks have one, I like to add copious amounts of live rock rubble. You can get this really cheap from premium aquatics for about a buck fifty a pound. On a budget? Make some DIY Agrocrete and use empty styrofoam egg crates to make ping pong ball sized rocks and seed them with a good piece of coralline coated live rock. This can be done for about 10 cents a pound! I also like to add some Garf Grunge or Grunge Lite but thats just me personally. A refugium kit with some worms and mini stars and such are also kinda nice to add to. There are a few places that sell these "kits". For substrate I use mainly Oolitic sand. Of course I got a few clean up crew guys in there too just for GP if nothing else. I also put a good number of pepermint shrimp in mine that have reproduced for me upon occasion.

Just some food for thought....

A refugium is a great addition to a tank, and can really give it a boost water quality and food stuff wise. They dont have to be hideious moss buckets, some can actually look quiet striking and have an abundence of life in them.

 

[BCT182]

What is a melt down anyways? CasueI have a small amount growing inside my tank.
Also, I need help I guess, how exactly should I set my sump/ refugium up? mechanical wise?

 

[reedman]

there are 2 primary ways to setup a sump/refugium:

1) above tank and gravity feed back to the tank

2) gravity feed down to the sump and pump back up to the tank

in the first method you use a small pump to feed water up to your (typically) refugium and the water will overflow at some predetermined level and feed back to the tank.

in the second (and more popular method) water is gravity fed (either with an overflow box for undrilled tanks, or through a bulkhead for drilled tank) to the sump/refugium. At this point you can feed your skimmer, put in your heaters, carbon, probes, etc. After all that you pump the water back up to the tank.

 

[BCT182]

I can only imagine how badly I could be made fun of for this, but would this work for a sump/ refugium.... Please be kind.
Brett

 

[reedman]

that would work until one of the power heads fails or you loose power. If either of these events happens you fill drain your tank until the pipe flowing water out to your sump is exposed to air and breaks syphon.

Your better bet would be to get an prefilter overflow (amiracle, lifereef, or a DIY model) and use a pump (powerhead is fine) to return water to your tank.

 

[Ritsuko Nashida]

Work with me here a little cuase English is my second language and I might be using the wrong terms here...

What is a melt down...In this context, its when your algae basically decides it doesnt want to play anymore and disolves dumping an ungodly amount of nutrients into your tank. I believe they call this going "sexual or asexual" not sure which one is right in this particular case but you get my drift anyways I am sure. This would be a disaster in a SPS or heavily stocked fish tank. It would still be pretty ugly other wise if you got much in the way of algae. Caulerpa is notorious for this. This is one reason you will find reefers that run their refugium lights 24/7 as this to an extent lessens the chance of it happening.

Plumbing, this is kinda hard to explain without a pic and I dont have one handy, but I will give it a shot. First do you have a reef ready tank? If you do then you just choose a return pump that wont exceed the RR tanks capacity to flow. In a 50 gallon a Mag 5 would probably work or something compareable. If its not reef ready then its a bit tricky matching up the flow. You could use a hang on overflow box to bring water into your sump, sump/refugium, refugium as appropriate and use a pump rated at about 25% more than the hang on the back over flow and install a Y-Gate valve to bleed off water if needed if the pump is moving more water than the Over flow box. For example...Use a CPR over flow box rated at 300 gallons and then use a Mag 5 rated a @500 gph with no head pressure. Again install a Y-Gate valve on the return pump to bleed off excess water if need be to keep from over flowing your display tank with the return pump. The example I provided shopuld be pretty close to about right to work in your case if the tank is not RR. But I am not neccessarily recommending those brands, just used them as an example. There are many combinations that will work. Hopefully this made some sense and I explained it clearly enough. If not maybe someone can jump in and give me some background assitance...

It really aint too hard. The hardest part is deciding what kinda sump or refugium arrangement that you want. Since I already have adequate DIY filtration systems on my tanks I chose to go with pure and unadulterated refugiums. But I have a very light Bio-Load in my tanks fish wise and feed very sparingly and have large clean up crews. They do a great job of keeping my water nice a clean and low in nutrients and I have an endless supply of Brine shrimp, mysis shrimp and various types of other pods.

Hopefully between the two post I have made and doing some reading on the net you can make a suitable choice that fits your needs. Maybe some others here with experience can jump in too.

HTH's.....

 

[Ritsuko Nashida]

Yes that would indeed be a disaster. I used over flow boxes (only 2 of 6 tanks are RR) for that reason instead of another pump as it will only allow my main tank to drain down so far and there is capacity in the Refugium to handle the extra water as I tested this a few times before settleing on the water level in the refugium.Another consideration that could be used is an over the tank refugium that you pump water to and you let water drain back by gravity. This has far less potential to over flow but it understandibly may not be a possible arrangment in many applications.