30 gal eshopps sump. My middle sump chamber, about 15 of those gallons, is my fuge. I use an external return pump (never leaks) and an external skimmer (Coralife) to give me max room in there.
I'd been having it pretty well haphazard. In a burst of energy, I decided on a new arrangement which I think will benefit life in the fuge. I was hesitant to disturb my mysis colony, but I think this will be better.
I have a large ball of cheato that's too big to rotate, under a 6500 k CFL floodlight in a clipon shoplight, right on the rim. It's an aluminum frame, and among base metals, aluminum is one that doesn't react much to salt water. Gives me no problems.
I pushed the cheato all toward the water entry chamber, so that it acts as a large sponge, but one rife with worms and bugs to keep it clean; I piled my collection of rock rubble as a lacework wall across the middle of the tank to hold the cheato in place and keep stray strands out of the pumps. And the rest of the fuge is open space.
In theory, this will give the bugs (copepods, amphipods) and such a place to breed in the rocks as well as the cheato, and the open space will be just clean water before the skimmer takes it up and extracts the invisible gunk that has to come out.
Dunno, but it looks better. I've also found that an old water bottle cap makes a pretty good coralline scraper for a sump: don't try this on your display tank, because I'm sure it can scratch it, but coralline just cakes the sump walls, and I'd kind of like to see what's going on in there.
I'd been having it pretty well haphazard. In a burst of energy, I decided on a new arrangement which I think will benefit life in the fuge. I was hesitant to disturb my mysis colony, but I think this will be better.
I have a large ball of cheato that's too big to rotate, under a 6500 k CFL floodlight in a clipon shoplight, right on the rim. It's an aluminum frame, and among base metals, aluminum is one that doesn't react much to salt water. Gives me no problems.
I pushed the cheato all toward the water entry chamber, so that it acts as a large sponge, but one rife with worms and bugs to keep it clean; I piled my collection of rock rubble as a lacework wall across the middle of the tank to hold the cheato in place and keep stray strands out of the pumps. And the rest of the fuge is open space.
In theory, this will give the bugs (copepods, amphipods) and such a place to breed in the rocks as well as the cheato, and the open space will be just clean water before the skimmer takes it up and extracts the invisible gunk that has to come out.
Dunno, but it looks better. I've also found that an old water bottle cap makes a pretty good coralline scraper for a sump: don't try this on your display tank, because I'm sure it can scratch it, but coralline just cakes the sump walls, and I'd kind of like to see what's going on in there.
