Refugium questions

[danderso]

Hi All

I've been out of the hobby for a couple of years and I'm starting a 65 gallon reef tank. I am trying to decide how to make a refugium. I have a 20 gal long for my sump. There is enough room to create the refugium as part of it. I was thinking of just cementing some flat pvc panels to make a box about a foot wide in the middle of the tank, add a deep sand bed, put a light over it, and drill holes in each side for the water flow. Is that going to be too much water flow? I seem to remember something about not too much flow. The other option would be to make the box not go all the way across the sump so there would be some free flow around it. Can I use PVC for the box? Will silicone hold it? Am I getting too creative here? I could just set a 10 gallon tank up on top of the sump (I have a 40" tall stand so plenty of room to go up) and plumb to it. And reguardless of the refugium I think I need to create some baffles so same questions on the flat pvc -- will it work? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

[muttley000]

Dont silicone the PVC sheet, use weldon 4052 or similar if you are going to go the route of making a separate box.

You need enough flow across the sand bed to keep detritus from settling there, more than you are going to get by just drilling holes in the PVC tank in my opinion.

I would just glass baffle off part of your sump, and T part of your return to flow into it, and let the water spill back into your return pump section of the sump. Much less work than fabricating the box and figuring out how to get water through it.

 

[monkeyman14554]

in my opinion you should have a separate tank for your ref.... with a smaller pump.. putting it in the sump works but put floss everywhere but a small spot you need to give the little critters a place to reproduce... the whole idea is to let them be with no fish.. fish are the downfall of refuges.... the ref i had in a sump were sealed off and every couple months when i changed the floss the corals were alive and open for a few days after.... but if you want to have if functional keep the flow away from a skimmer and fish