Pro's & Con's on draining to Refugium

[budster.stig1]

actually the "berlin method" has a deep sand bed, i will have no sand in the fug. i'm also using a large skimmer. i want to feed the fug with "raw" dt water and return that water to the dt, skipping the skimmer...not sure if it will make a difference, and i could easily change it later by feeding the fug with the return pump. i thought this was a noval idear, but people on this thread didn't like it, but i want to try for myself. i will also be using gfo and some kind of carbon source, vinager or bio pellets. it is a new tank and i'm doing the plumbing now..

The concept is definately novel, but what water feeds your skimmer, and drain sump? I believe it is generally accepted that the skimmer should be first inline for bio-waste to achieve maximum efficiency of the skimmer. I guess I missed something

 

[budster.stig1]

I have a multiple system and drain one line to the fuge and frag tank. The other line drains directly into my sump. It works for me.

Phillyfishguy:

That's was the original idea of this thread. Interesting it works for you! How much flow to each one? Where do they drain to? Same size DT's? Thanks for your in-put!.............Budster.stig

 

[phillyfishguy]

They all drain to the sump. The flow is lower for the fuge and frag tank. I don't limit flow, it is whatever the pump puts back up to the display. My tank is over a year old and this works for me.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I have a 180g mixed reef that feeds 3/5's of it's water into a frag tank and then to the DSB refugium and is then pumped back up. The other 2/5's and all the flow from a 75g nem tank feed into the skimmer side of the sump and the get pumped back to the DTs. The sump/fuge/frag tank are all in one 120g tank (2' x 8' x 18"). Frags are under a 70w MH and fuge is under PC 10K & 6500. Now I have 200lbs... maybe even 250lbs of LR and way better flow than most DT (IMHO) from a variety of uncommon designs. I also have a 2400gph OM4 CL system. My system has been up and running for 2 years now and I have had very, very little hairy algae problems (1 bout for a few weeks) and zero cyano. I ran GFO for 6 weeks for the algae and have never run carbon. I do have a large coil denitrater and I run a sock on 1 of 4 lines into the sump. I do have some CUC in the fuge and it looks very clean for my never having touched it in 2 years. Hope this info helps some?

 

[budster.stig1]

Ron Reefman:

I guess that the old attage that "there's more than one way to skin a cat" is certainly true.
this thread is starting to show all the idea's out there for using a fuge, frag. tank, skimmer and reactors, etc., not in that order. I wonder now, how does one analyze these idea's for there merit? Thanks again Ron..............................budster.stig