Display Refugium

[ReefinND]

I'm looking to add a display refugium for my 90 gallon, which already has a 20 gal sump.

I'd like to have 4" deep sand bed and have some dry rock in it to start. The intent for it is to grow pods, mangroves, some other more decorative algae; to help reduce some nitrates and make some food for a possible mandarin the (distant) future.

The setup I've been piecing together is the following :

Tank
Overflow Box
Return Pump
Light

I haven't officially measured the distance between where the display tank is and where the refugium will be located, but I estimate I would have 6' horizontal distance and maybe 3' - 3 1/2' height. It would be on a stand that's not right up against the DT.

I guess what I'm looking at is if the return pump will be sufficient or not sufficient enough. On one hand I don't want to overload the overflow box, though I could always go up one size and just not worry about it. And on the other hand I'd like to make sure there's a decent enough of flow in it.

Also if everything else just kind of adds up. I was also kind of curious if a 10 gal refugium will have any useful effect on a roughly 100-110 gal system, nitrate wise?

 

[Valentini89]

I can tell you this, you need about a 40g for that size tank

 

[Ron Reefman]

ReefinND, I have a 125g DT, a 50g sump and a 50g display refugium. A similar size display tank to yours, so lets talk.

I'll start with, despite what others may say, any size refugium is useful. Bigger may be better, but a refugium that is small will always have 'food' for the algae in it, and it should grow well so you can export regularly.

I'd recommend you get a DC return pump so you can control the speed and flow rate to the entire system. Then do your plumbing so that everywhere you want the return pump to pump water has a gate valve to control the flow to each individual unit. I have a Jebao DCT15000 return pump which is bigger than I need, but it works. I feed the 125g DT, the 50g display refugium, a 1hp chiller that is out behind my house (roughly 10' to 12' away from the DT/sump and return pump) and an empty reactor (just in case I want or need to run GFO, carbon or anything else. BTW, in almost 7 years the reactor has been used in total about 2 months.

There is a link address in my signature that will get you to my build thread and you can see the building of and installing of the display refugium. This system has only been running about 9 months (my old system developed a non-repairable leak). I have some macro algae, a few gorgonians, a leather coral, a couple of urchins and a red Hawaiian reef lobster in the display refugium.