Looking for suggestions on sump

[ColdFish]

Hey all

Am in the process of setting up an AGA 90 Megaflow. Finally got rid of the note I stapled to my forehead reminding me to paint the back. Painted it this evening and since I was planning on doing plumbing tomorrow I went ahead and put the sump that I already had in the stand. Immediately ran into a problem.

The sump I have is the size of a 20H if I'm thinking correctly. It is 16" tall. I also have a fuge made by Ecosystems that I picked up at a steal when a LFS went out of business recently. The fuge is 24 X 8 X 8 and came with a Rio 2100 pump, CF Light fixture and bulb, and 20 lbs of miracle mud for substrate. It's designed to sit on top of the sump, but the whole arrangement is too tall to fit under my stand

Since the fuge is way better than the sump I was planning to use, I'm now thinking that I could pick up a 20L tank to use as a sump. That should give me the clearance that I need to put the fuge on top of it, but have no idea how I should set up the baffles etc. in the 20L. Any tips on the fine points of this will be much appreciated. Also, am curious how you would set up the intake and output on the fuge as I've never used anything like this before. Put the Rio pumping to the fuge on the output side of the sump along with the return pump? Gravity return from the fuge back to the first stage of the sump or does it matter? Again, any tips much appreciated.

Don

[melosu58]

Mine is gravity fed to the fuge 1st part where I have live sand and mud and calerpa over the baffle to the bio balls soon to be LR rubble under the baffle to the return pump on the 3rd part.

[ColdFish]

Thanks for the info. I think my main question concerning the fuge was where to go with the fuge output back to the sump. I want to eventually get some pods and stuff growing in the fuge (thinking about that dragonet down the road ) and was thinking that it might be necessary for the return water from the fuge to by-pass the skimmer. The current plan is to use a 20L as a sump set up in 3 sections. Intake side will be small, not planning on bio-balls or anything, just mainly to trap bubbles. Still have to figure out the baffles. Second section will be the bulk of the sump and will have heaters and skimmer. Small 3rd section for the return pump to the tank and the rio 2100 feeding the fuge. I guess I will have the gravity return from the fuge feeding into this 3rd section as well. That way water coming out of the fuge has only 2 options, return to the fuge or pumped to the main tank. Does this sound workable? Sorry, but I'm a sump noob and this will also be my first reef tank so trying to get as much advice as I can

[clexman]

I'm in a similar spot to you. I pick up my 90g AGA Megaflow today and have been trying to figure out the filtration all week. I started to worry that the 600gph max that the magaflow is rated for won't be enough, so I'm going to convert the predrilled return hole into a 2nd drain hole to increase the flow. I'm also drilling 2 new outputs on the back of the glass.