Where is your Refugium in your current setup?

[Carlo]

This is geared more toward people with larger systems but any input is welcome.

I'm just wondering how you guys and gals are handling your drains if you have a refugium inline. Do you for example dump all water into the refugium then to skimmer and then to sump or split half to refugium and the other half to the sump.

Where do you have your skimmer(s) in the system?

At present I've got half my drain going to the refugium and the other half going to the sump. On the half going to the sump half is going to the dedicated skimmer box and half directly to the sump. So at present I'm skimming 1/4 of the drain water. I do have another skimmer to put online but I'm missing one part which hasn't turned up yet from the move. Once I find that I'm sure I'll be skimming closer to 80% of the water going directly to the sump.

Any thoughts or suggestions are most welcome!

Carlo

 

[Absinthe]

From what I have read most people tend to split the overflow because of the sheer volume of water going in the overflow. If you have 1600gph running through the overflows in the tank (or even more), that might be more than most want in their refugium.

Splitting it up does allow for a slower refugium, but as you notice the other issue is less water being skimmed right from leaving the tank.

Adding a second skimmer so that ALL the water in the sump (even if its goign to 2 sumps) is skimmed will help filtration immensely. 2 skimmers working at optimum cant be a bad thing!

 

[jazzsam]

I think I did something similar to what you described. I have 2 drains and one going right into the skimmer section and the other is split between the fuge and skimmer. I just played around with the valves until I got the flow I wanted.

 

[Brian]

I have one of my return lines going to the fuge (off of a manifold setup) and then the fuge drains right back into the sump. Nice and simple!

 

[Treadingwater]

Mine is set up like Sam's. I currently have about 25% flow going to my refuge, the rest goes to my into my skimmer area in my sump.

I also branched off my drain line on the other overflow and put in a ball valve the for when/if I modify my skimmer to recirculate. This will allow me to use the branch to direct feed the skimmer.

 

[Carlo]

I have one of my return lines going to the fuge (off of a manifold setup) and then the fuge drains right back into the sump. Nice and simple!

Is your skimmer in the sump?

 

[JohnS_323]

Here is the drawing for the system in our basement:

This may seem a bit confusing but it helps to remember that one pump/manifold feeds all of the tanks and everything flows back to the 100g sump.

The fuge is all the way on the left. If you can follow it, the feed comes off of the far left port of the manifold. The line then splits between the 150g stock tank and the fuge. I use a bunch of ball valves to control the flow to each tank. The drain lines for the fuge are cut in on the left side of the tank and just loop right back to the main sump.

 

[TNT_Tile]

Refugium? Skimmer? Do you need those? Just a joke but I've kept a reef tank with out for about 5 yrs now. I don't keep anything that is fragile and have a slightly high nitrate level of 5 ppm. I money permited I would surely have both. Best of luck sounds like a nice set up.

 

[Carlo]

5 ppm is really good TNT_Tile. How many dirty fishes do you have?

 

[Carlo]

<snip>
This may seem a bit confusing but it helps to remember that one pump/manifold feeds all of the tanks and everything flows back to the 100g sump.

John, I stole/used your manifold idea. What a great concept. I built mine with 8 ports. I saw how quickly you used yours up so I added a couple extra ones in there at the start and left room on the ends to add more if needed down the road.

I orignally just had my skimmer in the 55 sump. The level would change an inch or so and throw off the skimmer a little so I decided to throw the skimmer in the old ProClear 200 sump box (get more water volume too) to keep the water level constant which has worked well. I played around with hooking it directly off the tank drain as well as from the refugium. I figured if I used one of those instead of the manifold I'd save a manifold port and be guaranteed that the water in the skimmer wasn't recirculated water. I totally forgot about connecting it to the manifold at this point until your post. Considering that I'm only skimming about 1/4 to 1/3 the water volume that is being drained it would make no difference anyway. You just helped me decide exactly where it will go (off the manifold). This way I can use the ball valve to limit the flow going into the box and not push to much into it.

Thanks for reminding me to use the stuff I already built!

Carlo

 

[JohnS_323]

Thanks for reminding me to use the stuff I already built!

 

[Brian]

I have one of my return lines going to the fuge (off of a manifold setup) and then the fuge drains right back into the sump. Nice and simple!

Is your skimmer in the sump?

Yes, My skimmer is plumbed into my sump.

 

[RevClyburn]

John,

THAT'S DEEP MAN! I'm very impressed and confused at the same time, lol.

edwin

 

[Carlo]

Imagine that, I had everything I needed to hook the skimmer box into the manifold without a trip to Lowes (finally). While I was gluing PVC pipe for the skimmer box I did my UV also. 5 of my 8 manifold outs are now used. I know I'll be using 1 for the trigger/lion tank and 1 for the series of phosban reactors. If I do the frag tank as planned I'm out of ports. Man the ports go quickly but sure do make things nice and tidy! I guess the next time I'm at Lowes I'll pick up enough parts to throw 2 more ports on the manifold. I think I'm going to throw a couple of gate valves in the mix too, since trying to adjust flow with the ball valves is a pain in the but.

John, I know you did your diagram in Visio. Are all the items you used standard in Visio or did you have to add them in?

 

[JohnS_323]

They're all standard flow chart stencils. I "built" the components all on my own. Basically, I'd put together all of the elements of something, like a ball valve, and when I got it the way I wanted it I'd select the whole thing and make a group out of it. I'd then cut, paste and re-size that group where ever I need it.

The real key to making the drawing "clean" looking is to use white boxes over areas where one pipe crosses over another. I use the boxes to block out one set of lines to give the appearance of one pipe being over the other. Also, I do a lot of it with the drawing maxed out at 2000% magnification.

HTH and wasn't too remedial!

 

[Phyl]

We ran out of flow right about the time that we ran out of ports. And that's with a 5800gph pump!

 

[malulu]

i don't remember where i read (something recently) about using all the tank water going through the refugium have a advantage of let the macro algea "purelify" all the tank water, then to the sump with a skimmer, than back to the display tank.

what is the advantage of only letting not the full amount of water going through the refugium?

my current setup have 2 hoses coming down into a pre-refugium-sump (30g - with a small skimmer in it), so the water won't be cloudy by hitting the fine-sand inside the refugium, then it all flow to the refugium (100g), then down to the sump (100g - have an ETSS-800 skimmer in it), then back to the display tank. depends on how your advises would be, i might use one hose directly go down to the sump below (instead of the current two).

 

[Carlo]

OK, that confirmed my theary that it wasn't as simple to do as your pic "(from looking clean) made it seem.

 

[Carlo]

i don't remember where i read (something recently) about using all the tank water going through the refugium have a advantage of let the macro algea "purelify" all the tank water, then to the sump with a skimmer, than back to the display tank.

what is the advantage of only letting not the full amount of water going through the refugium?

I think that is the ultimate way to go if you can. However for many of us, the volume we are pushing would cause the refugium to overflow so we have to find the sweet spot the refugium can handle and then dump the rest to the skimmer or sump area.

Carlo

 

[IrradiatedReef]

I have a home made nano, not a pre-built cube. I have it set up like its a large system. My overflow all goes into the left side of my sump. Then I have the bubble traps. In the center is where the return pump sits. The right side of the sump is my refugium and has a cascade wall that trickles into the center return pump zone. My refugium is fed by a bypass on my return line from the pump.

If I had the room to put a skimmer in my sump <only a 10gal. tank> I would have it on the left side where the overflow pours in. I wouldn't have it in the center only because I would not want to skim any goodies pouring over from the refugium.