Rate my Plans for a Freshwater Sump/Refugium

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Terrance

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Jun 21, 2011
Messages
2,577
Location
Seattle
Sorry posted in the wrong section.

This will be my first sump/refugium build before I continue my SW tank setup.

My goal for this sump/refugium is to:
1. Add more water volume
2. Refuge area to grow floating plants (my fish is tearing up all plants) and possible inverts/fish.
3. Better biological filtration
4. Faster maintenance of filter pads. For my canister filters, I have to disconnect it from hosing, take the whole system out of my stand, disassemble the unit, and I rinse the pads. Its a long process and I would like to clean the filter pads more often in between weekly water changes.

wetdryfilterrefugium.jpg


1. This setup does add more water volume.
2. It has an area for floating plants, fish, and inverts.
3. Wet/dry filter provides better biological filtration (plants help too).
4. Compared to canister filter, this setup is very easy to clean during weekly maintenance. All I have to do is take out the filter pad (located above the bioballs) and rinse it. I can even do it easily 2-3 times per week without stopping the flow.

I was thinking about adding an algae scrubber into this system, but it will be difficult to fit everything under my stand. Its also more maintenance than taking out the floating plants.


What do yall think about my idea? Its a 40g sump/refugium.
 
If you have a pound to a pound and a half per gallon of live rock in the system, I would completely skip the bio balls part of this filter and put a quality protein skimmer in that section. That would do a much better job at filtration than the aerobic bacteria that bio balls offer.
 
mr_X said:
If you have a pound to a pound and a half per gallon of live rock in the system, I would completely skip the bio balls part of this filter and put a quality protein skimmer in that section. That would do a much better job at filtration than the aerobic bacteria that bio balls offer.

I believe it's FW lol
 
mr_X said:
Then what does this mean?
"This will be my first sump/refugium build before I continue my SW tank setup."

I mean the title says "Rate my plans for a Freshwater sump"
 
Sorry for not clarifying.

I was thinking about redoing my FW system before I continued my SW tank project. I have two 120g tanks. One is up and running FW. The other one is empty, but it will be SW tank. If I were to redo my FW system, then I'd design the new system on the empty tank without disturbing my FW fish.
 
Ok I just revised the plan since I found Pond Matrix to be better than wet/dry bioballs. Now I just need to utilize more plants.

plantedrefugium.jpg
 
Back
Top Bottom