20g Nano looking for suggestions

[nudibranch]

This is seeming almost too easy but let me see if I understand this right.
I'd just drill 2 holes in the rubbermaid container. I used a PH to send water to the fuge ad then let it "overflow" back into the tank via gravity in the other hole? What GPH should be going into the sump? You think ~4X the tank volume/hr be enough? How deep should the water column be? And how do you prevent the macro from releasing everything back into the tank? I know you harvest it, but what keeps the left over part from leaching everything back into my tank?

 

[vibe]

ok the best way to see an above tank refugium is by looking at brooklyn johnny's set up. go under search and type in "10 gallon kitchen nano" i think thats what it is. drool a little while why you look at the pics of his magnificent tank and then scroll till you see the fuge.:joy:

 

[vibe]

found that pic

 

[vibe]

i think he has one pump taking water up into the fuge, and one pump taking water down into the tank.

 

[norway]

just for the record, im not an expert but BAD IDEA unless you have a float switch to cut off one pump or the other because if one fails or if one slows then you WILL have over flow problems. its is easiest to just let it fill the refuge up and then have a bulkhead hole at the desired water level. sorry i dont have pictures of mine yet. i plan on documenting every step so i can share, i love when people do that so you can see exactly how they accomplished the feat

 

[nudibranch]

Yeah I would only pump water into the refuge. I would let it overflow back to the tank.

 

[vibe]

i could be wrong about having 2 pumps

 

[jim27]

I'm pretty sure he only had one pump for his fuge. It would be a HUGE pain in the ass to try and match flow rates EXACTLY for the two pumps. Especially since one would be pumping water up while the other pumping down. With a drain, water only flows back to the tank as fast as its pushed into the refugium. If one was even the tinyist bit off it would eventually cause a flood.

 

[nudibranch]

So what would I do put the input to the refug higher than the drain and leave the display a little low on water to allow for a power outage?

 

[norway]

it doesnt matter if the input and output were at the same height, just dont put the input higher....you'll have water spraying across the top of your tank, ha. a one way valve would get rid of an overflow problem as far as water being siphoned back because of a loss of pressure. the best way to go about building one is to just play with it a little until you figure out what you want for your setup. just go step by step and all the kinks will sort out.