refugium...

[Ping]

Of course larger is better, but any sized refuge for the growth of plankton, pods, and macro algae is a benefit. Many systems only have room under the tank for a 10g or so glass or acrylic refugium. It was your sump that was too small to have a fuge included.

[Ping]

The sump has to be able to hold the equipment and power failure water.

[dpotts]

My sump has 2 chambers right now, one with my pump and a larger one. I was thinking if I put a divider in the larger chamber thus making it 3 chambers. The first chamber would be big enough to hold my overflow lines coming from my tank and my skimmer (chamber size-12W x 9.5L x 16H). The water would then flow over the divider into the 2nd chamber (12W x 11L x 16H) where I was thinking the refugium could go then flow over the divider into the pump chamber. When my tank is operating, the water level is at 10 inches and when I turn it off the water that siphons back into the sump gets it up to about 12 inches so I have about 4 inches of safety before it runs over. Would this not work? Forgive my novice questions but I'm learning as I go and your talk got me jazzed about refugiums!!

[texmex]

I don't see problem with it as long as you have some kind of trap to keep all you alge in the fuge and out of the return area if the power goes out

[dpotts]

I just re-measured my sump and it's more like 25g (30L x 12W x 16 H). I was thinking that I could use some eggcrate to keep the algae where it needed to be.

[jlh81]

i made one just like melvs reef but mine is drilled on the side and is gravity feed back to the tank works awsome

[brewercm]

I did exactly what you are talking about with the eggcrate but was still paranoid about small pieces making it through (more so because my top off is there also and don't want that to get tangled and stuck open). I ended up using eggcrate and on the one side I also used some sheets of needle point plastic stuff (not sure what it's really called) from Wal-Mart and glued it to one side of the eggcrate. So far this has worked out great and the whole package of the plastic from the craft section was just a few extra bucks.

[jrsatx20]

i put some of that same plastic needle work stuff to seperate my macro from the mangroves