New to refuge

[Shoei]

Never had a refuge had trickle filters thats it so i know nothing on this subject. Any help will be greatly appreciated! What size do i need? How do i set it up?

55 gallon reef
60lbs of live rock
50 lbs of live sand

Please help me learn about this subject

 

[Smitty]

Are you talking about a refug or a just a sump to contain equipment and such?

 

[Shoei]

Are you talking about a refug or a just a sump to contain equipment and such?

both sorry for any confusion i cause

 

[Sniperhank]

I have a 55 reef. I got myself a 20 long from petco and some glass cut at lowes to fit. I was able to have ~10 inch sections for the 3 areas. I say roughly 10 as I made a bubble trap with 3 pieces of glass going into the return. This is lots of room for almost anything you would want to put into the system.

As for the fuge(second section) I got an 8 dollar clip on work light from walmart and a 10 watt energy saver bulb i had laying around the house. The 10 watt energy savers have a 2600 spectrum and compare to a 40 watt bulb. I currently have cheato, money plant, and 5 red mangroves growing in my fuge. Only upgrade id have on it may be the bulb to change the spectrum of lighting, but im not overly concerned as everything is growing nicely.

 

[Smitty]

The rule of thumb is to have it as large as you can. The minimum I would say would be a 10g tank, but that wouldn't leave much room for a skimmer and other equipment plus a fuge. You would also need to determine what kind of fuge do you want? Just some macro like cheato or something more elaborate? How much are you wanting to spend? One of the largest expenses will be a return pump, plus you will need to have a hang on back to drain to the sump.

I recommend you do some searching on the forums to see what others have done, and maybe you-tube as well to get some ideas to at least get a frame of mind of what you want to do.

 

[Sniperhank]

Oh, that sparked my memory lol. I run a CPR overflow with an aqualifter pump. This will prevent losing the siphon. It works great. The CPR I have is the smallest they offer as I had it on my 36 gal prior to the 55. As for a return pump I am using a mag 5. It comes with a silencer, which is really a sponge that pops onto it. There isn't a need for it, the pump runs silently. Along with that, it was preventing my pods from getting into my display tank.

 

[Shoei]

The rule of thumb is to have it as large as you can. The minimum I would say would be a 10g tank, but that wouldn't leave much room for a skimmer and other equipment plus a fuge. You would also need to determine what kind of fuge do you want? Just some macro like cheato or something more elaborate? How much are you wanting to spend? One of the largest expenses will be a return pump, plus you will need to have a hang on back to drain to the sump.

I recommend you do some searching on the forums to see what others have done, and maybe you-tube as well to get some ideas to at least get a frame of mind of what you want to do.

Well the wife gave me my allowance so i got $250 to spend so anything below that would be great.

I want something easy to maintain but the best bang for my buck i but i will research as much as possible just hoping to get as much insight as i can here.

 

[Shoei]

Has anyone used any of the aqueon proflex sumps/fuge?

 

[Sniperhank]

Yes I have one. Waste of money. I replaced it with the sump I made. It is backwards where you should put your skimmer and such. If you have a 250 allowance spend the roughly 50 bucks and make your own out of a 20 long like I did. Then spend the rest of your money on a good quality skimmer, an octopus or bubble magus...something like that. No seaclone or coralife.

 

[Smitty]

I will second an Octopus skimmer. Bought one recently and love it.

Making your own sump isn't very difficult either. Then you can set it up the way you want. I tried the fuge thing but it didn't work out for me. I just ended up re-building with 3 sections - intake, liverock/chaeto, return. Works good for me.

 

[Steve silbernagel]

I googled images of sump/refugium and got tons of ideas