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Aquarium Advice FINatic
I have a friend with a 10-gallon mini-reef and a penguin 125 filter. He wants to build a refugium with a DSB and has like zero money to spend. We took an inventory of what we had and found it to be a bit lacking, so we have to do some improvising. We have the following:
1) His 10-gallong tank.
2) His Pengiun 125 filter.
3) Rubbermaid container.
4) My unused Rio 600.
I thought about how he was going to get all this going without an overflow, and then it ocurred to me that we could make one out of his Pengiun 125. Here is basically the steps we plan on taking to make this work...
1) Take the motor out of the filter.
2) Install a plastic or acrylic divider between the intake pump section of the filter and the overflow/biowheel/output section.
3) Cut a hole where the motor was and glue in a piece of PVC that will server as part where the water will overflow into the tube that will go down to the refugium.
4) Cut a hole in the overflow/biowheel/output section of the pengiun and install another PVC pipe to which we will connect the hose coming from the return pump in the refugium.
This way the "U-Tube" that was used as the intake for pump originally will siphon water into the motor section of the pengiun filter. It will then overflow into the PVC that we have installed and go down a tube into the refugium. Then we will have the return pump send the water back up through the other PVC that we have installed into the other section of the pengiun filter at which point it will go through the filter cartridge and the biowheel as it does during normal pengiun filter operation and then flow back into the tank.
I didn't bother making a diagram of this because I didn't know how interested people would be. If anyone wants me to, I can post one. I just thought this was a cool idea, and a great way to save money.
1) His 10-gallong tank.
2) His Pengiun 125 filter.
3) Rubbermaid container.
4) My unused Rio 600.
I thought about how he was going to get all this going without an overflow, and then it ocurred to me that we could make one out of his Pengiun 125. Here is basically the steps we plan on taking to make this work...
1) Take the motor out of the filter.
2) Install a plastic or acrylic divider between the intake pump section of the filter and the overflow/biowheel/output section.
3) Cut a hole where the motor was and glue in a piece of PVC that will server as part where the water will overflow into the tube that will go down to the refugium.
4) Cut a hole in the overflow/biowheel/output section of the pengiun and install another PVC pipe to which we will connect the hose coming from the return pump in the refugium.
This way the "U-Tube" that was used as the intake for pump originally will siphon water into the motor section of the pengiun filter. It will then overflow into the PVC that we have installed and go down a tube into the refugium. Then we will have the return pump send the water back up through the other PVC that we have installed into the other section of the pengiun filter at which point it will go through the filter cartridge and the biowheel as it does during normal pengiun filter operation and then flow back into the tank.
I didn't bother making a diagram of this because I didn't know how interested people would be. If anyone wants me to, I can post one. I just thought this was a cool idea, and a great way to save money.
) if so I would be concerned with a malfunction of your fuge return pump. if that stops, you'll be overflowing your fuge onto the floor.
