Originally Posted by
bms
http:///forum/post/3216004
SUBSCRIBED and will be following along! this is one of the coolest projects ive seen here on SWF. I Think adding a refugium to this tank is an necessity. you are not planning on using any other kind of filtration other than large water changes with ocean water? i believe that is what i got out of the thread but i will go over it again. i think a 3000 gallon refugium would work great for that setup (because a refugium is in itself a living filter) especially if you add a Deep Sand Bed (DSB) to be your main source of nitrate export, as well as a place to grow macro algae for nutrient export, pH stabilization (if ran on a reverse photoperiod) and even to feed to your hungry tangs and angels (assuming you will be keeping these), however it could maybe be a little bigger (Maybe 20% total). IMO once you get to a tank that size though, and you have a large amount of flow going through your system already, 3000 gallons would work fine although i have read that the ideal size is around 20% for the home aquaria. maybe you could contact some kind of zoo or aquarium biologist and explain to them what you are doing and give them the size of your tank and ask what they would recommend for a refugium or if you need something else or even need one at all. i would think it would be a good idea because you could have like a water heater sized protein skimmer hooked up to it that would pull all kinds of skimmate/junk floating around out to clear up your water and keep your tank from developing that nasty oily film on the surface.. If you are pulling your saltwater into the tank directly from the ocean, even going at a deeper depth, i would imagine that you would probably still be sucking in detritus and other impurities including chunks of seaweed. i would imagine with a tank that large you would probably have quite the bioload being produced as well on a daily basis from your fish and inverts etc..alone so any kind of filtration like a DSB refugium would tremendously help out. With a 3000 gallon refugium thats about 15-16% volume of your water. Thats a great sized refugium. Many at home aquarists have a setup with a sump and built in refugium thats lets say 20-50% volume of their total tank. Now subtract the volume of space for the sump and return pump and you've probably got a space of around 10-30% depending on this particular persons setup. Even so, we are talking about a completely different sized scale here. with a system that large and a nice set of return pumps you could cycle much more gallons per hour through your tank with the correct plumbing setup. And you could have the sickest refugium ever! i would DEFINATELY go with a DSB and grow macro algae in there as well as have a separate clean up crew of its own and you could even keep smaller fish or fish that would be considered dinner to many larger and more aggressive fish in your main display tank. i am going to pm you a message right now about some other info. hope this turns out as awesome as it looks so far! and im sure it will! goodluck to yah.
Thank you very much for the information. Just a quick question: When you say DSB, how deep are we talking? In the current design I have a space for around .5 meters (~ 1.5 ft) of sand. Is this deep enough?
As for the size of the refugium, we can certainly expand it a bit to be around 4500 - 5000 gallons. Also, mangrove is easy to get by around here, and we were planning to plant in front of the house, it would be easy to get it for the refugium as well.
As for skimmers, can you recommend something? I looked around and found
this. Any other brands models that might work in this setup? I am thinking maybe 2 skimmers with a rate of 12,000 gallons is better than one with a rate 20,000 gallons just for the redundancy.
