sump. refugium, wet/dry filter

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Loki4711

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Mar 5, 2005
Messages
17
Location
Tampa FL
What is the difference between a sump, refugium, wet/dry filter? can one be integrated into the other? i had a spare 10 gal. laying around and looked at a bunch of scetches of sumps and so on. I could not find anything that explains the difference between the three. so after reading a bunch of different articles and looking at scetches i came up with one of my own.
So i went ahead and built it but now i need to know what to ad to it. All i know i need is LS, LR, a pump with enough head hight, and some sort of filter media. Which kind of filter media and and should i add plants and a pc?
 

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What is the difference between a sump, refugium, wet/dry filter?

They are all the same thing. Well not really but they are so simular its sicking. A sump is at its very basic a storage vessle that is connected to your tank to increase the water quantity as well as provide a place for your skimmer, heaters, etc. A wet/dry filter has a sump in it and in addition has a chamber for bio media like bioballs to have the water trickle over it for filtration. Wet/drys are also refered to as trickle filters because of this trickle action. Remove the biomedia from a wet/dry and guess what. You have a sump. A refuge is simular only in that you can use it to increase the water capacity of the tank. A refuge is a special purpose tank that you use to grow or cultivate something specific. For example you can have an algae fuge that grows macro alage that you can use for filtration as well as feeding for your main tank. Other forms of refuge can be used to grow amphipods and copepods. There is a good article on both fuges and sumps in our articles section (see link in sig or link above).

Your diagram looks good but I do have one question. How is the water getting out of the skimmer chamber? The walls look as if they are the full height of the tank. They should be shorter than the tank walls to facilitate the water flowing over the shorter wall into the fuge area. Do you know how much water will reside in the return pump section? When you have evaporation this is where the water level will drop. If that chamber is to small you will have a problem with evaportion and the pump sucking air as the water level lowers. An auto topoff device can be a good aid in not having to to off the tank daily.
 
Thanks that explains alot. the wall going from the skimmer side to the fuge side is about a 1/2 in. lower. what about filter media? i figured i can add bio balls or some other media to the chamber where the water flows in, but the chamber is not that big its only 5x5x11. is there anything smaller more efficiant? also should i use any other sediment besides LS? what about miracle mud or something like that?
 
i usually go to creative oceans on dale mabury just south of 275 they have really nice LR when they get in a new load. ive never been to marine warehouse got to go check that out.
 
Thanks for the diagrams...I have a spare 10g tank sitting around and have been thining of upgrading my current tank to a 90g, and converting my 10g into a sump. I'm thinking now that I can build it with some relatively inexpensive acrylic, aquarium safe silicon and egg crates... does not seem like an overly complex situation.

I would of course still need to purchase a good skimmer that could fit in the 10g tank..that might be an issue, not sure. Most of the skimmers I've seen are pretty tall.
 
it only cost me about 20 bucs for the acrylic and a cuter at homedepot. the silicone i got at LFS. the hardest part is the cutting. since i only have a 35 gallon tank i have a small protein skimmer that will fit right in.
 
Most sump/fuges only hold a portion of their volume in water. You have to leave enough empty space in them so that if your power goes out the overflowing water from the tank will have someplace to go. If your skimmer wall is only 1/2" lower than the top, and if you have allowed space for powerout backflow, how is the water going to get over the skimmer wall into the fuge, then into the sump?
 
im not sure how much extra space i need for the backflow but the way i see it i left about 2 gallons for backflow. if the pump cuts out the tank will just fill up all the way. or most of the way depending on the amout of overflow from the tank. the water level should just leve out due to preasure from the incoming water. the water flows into the first chamber then underneath to the protein skimmer then back up into the next chamber which creates even flow to the fuge area. it has to flow from the protein skimmer chamber into anothe chamber is that it would not have evin flow in the corner next to the intake chamber. so i put up a secound wall just lower then the wall leving the ps chamber.
 
Loki4711 said:
im not sure how much extra space i need for the backflow but the way i see it i left about 2 gallons for backflow. if the pump cuts out the tank will just fill up all the way. or most of the way depending on the amout of overflow from the tank. the water level should just leve out due to preasure from the incoming water. the water flows into the first chamber then underneath to the protein skimmer then back up into the next chamber which creates even flow to the fuge area. it has to flow from the protein skimmer chamber into anothe chamber is that it would not have evin flow in the corner next to the intake chamber. so i put up a secound wall just lower then the wall leving the ps chamber.

this is not shown in the scetche i thought of it afterwords.
 
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