anyone w/ gravity 'fuges

tru conch

tru conch

Active Member
my question is for anyone with a gravity 'fuge.
how is your return line set up? do you have just a bulkhead fitting or some sort of hang on hose siphoning the water back to the display tank? im looking to set up a gravity fuge, with a ball valve on the return line, but dont know how to set up the return line....
any help is appreciated. thanx
 
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glazer

Guest
tru conch,
I have my refugium set up as an overhead.. gravity fed return. I have the 'fuge drilled with a 1/2" inlet and then there is a 3/4" overflow.... My pump feeding the fuge sits in an HOB filter and the return line just dumps back into the HOB at the top.
Well they say pic is worth a thousand words....
By the way, I don't know what size tank you are talking about, if this setup appears a bit on the small size, well it's only a 5.5 gallon tank and a 3.5 gallon 'fuge......lol
 
rhomer

rhomer

Member
was drilling the acrylic a pain. I have a spare 5 gallon hex tank that will fit nicely next to my sump. It is slightly taller than my sump, and I tought this would make a good refugium. It will take almost no $ to setup, but the overflow was the thing I couldn't figure out.
I figure I will add a T on the return line of the sump that is a smaller diameter about 1/2" to 1/4". Then I will add some sort of overflow back to the sump.
I do like your idea of drilling the acrylic. Looks very clean and very effective.
 
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glazer

Guest
rhomer,
Actually drilling the acrylic "KritterKeeper" was easy... I used standard hole saws and a cordless drill.
Since the plastic is sooo thin what you need top be carefull about is putting too much pressure downward on the hole saw, especially the pilot bit... too much pressure could very easily crack the plastic... I had a small crack start when I drilled the first hole but luckily the diameter of the finished hole eliminated the crack, if that made sense, hehe. Just drill very slowly... very slowly. Too fast and the plastic melts not only onto the holesaw but almost seals what you are drilling back up... just a touch of sanding around the edge of the hole with like 180 grit and you're good to go.
Good luck and be sure and throw a pic up when you are finished and set up... would love to see it! :D
 
nm reef

nm reef

Active Member
My gravity return refugium is very low tech and was cheap to put together. Its is in 2 stages...first stage is a 30 gal rubbermaid container that is fed from the display via 3 powerheads(1 is 3/4" tube...2 are 1/2 " tube) they simply flow over the top of the container.....water flows from this first stage via 2x3/4" lines into the second chamber that is a 50 gal rubbermaid container....from there it flows back to the display via 2x3/4" lines. I didn't use bulkheads...just drilled holes to fit the lines and silicone to seal them. My reason for stages was easy enough. The 50 gal was created first.....and was soon full of caluperas. I also drip suppliments into the origional stage and I run 2 mechanical filters for occassional carbon/phosphate sponge. The origional was working great and I wanted to expand it.....so instead of removing and rebuilding a larger one....I added a second stage. Now the first stage is primarily sand with rubble and less caluperas....the new stage is basically sand with tons of caluperas. Both stages are under 4x40 watts of NO lighting 24/7....total cost was well under $100.....but I had the powerheads already. Within 2 months of bringing the first stage on-line my nitrates went from 20ppm to zero and have remained at zero.....plus my pod populations are huge!!!!! In addition I removed my skimmer after about 1 month and have been skimmerless since. Eventually I plan to develope a much larger refugium system with 2 seperate calupera/sand stages that feed into a larger stage with sand and rubble that returns into the display. If all goes well I will soon have close to 80 gal of refugium volume on a 55 gal display!Currently my flow rate is about 100-120 gal per hour....eventually I'd like to bring this up to around 150-175 gal per hr...the powerheads that currently feed it will be replaced with an external pump/pumps.....but for now my lil low tech system works like a charm!:cool:
 
rhomer

rhomer

Member
Well it cost me 7 dollars, and 4 dollars was for the drill bit. I went extremely slow to drill the hole, and I didn't have any problems. No cracking, in fact it looks professionally done. I didn't even have to make second trip to Home Depot. I got it hooked up, balanced the flow, and I had no leaks immediatly.
I had the tank, a spare 20watt 10k bulb and fixture, I even had leftover sand from the main tank. I put in a piece of live rock and filled it with some macro algea. I don't think that I got caluprea. I figure I will give it a try. It took me about 2 hours to hook it up. I will get pics later, most likely when my tank is up to par that I will post pics of it also.
Thanks glazer your idea made it so easy.
BTW any ideas on when the Nitrates will drop. They are currently 10 - 20.
Rob
 
tru conch

tru conch

Active Member
thanx for all the help, esp glazer with the pics. i was not aware that a hole drill bit can be used to make holes in glass. i will probably do something similar to glazer, just having a ball valve to regulate the return flow. i might not use the 10 glass tank, but a rubbermaid instead.
nm- your idea of a staged system is awesome. ive never really thought to set up a 'fuge/sump in stages. it sounds very effective. i might think about that for my larger sump/fuge on my 75.
again, thanks to everyone for the ideas and input.
 
G

glazer

Guest
rhomer,
That's very cool buddy!!! Glad it worked out for you, would love to see a pic of the setup.... as far as your nitrates,well that is kinda hard to answer. I don't really know anything much about your setup... rock, fish, feeding, ect., ect. With my setup my nitrates started reading 0 (with three different test kits) after about two weeks... but then you have to remember I have my 'fuge hooked up to a 5 1/2 gallon tank!...lol I do a one gallon water change a week but was still getting a <10 reading pre-refugium. It must be working and I was going for stability and all as I don't have much room for error.
tru conch,
Very cool as well if I was able to be of some help. But as Melbourne stated... we were talking about acrylic/plastic! Standard hole saws aint gonna do it on the glass, you need diamond bits for that... and I have drilled glass before, it's not as bad as you may think. Check out www.harborfreight.com for good bits and good pricing if you are gonna tackle the glass thing.
Oh, and last.... if you DO do a setup similiar to mine, you don't want to regulate your return, you mentioned using a ball valve for the return line.... with an overflow, the water is gonna leave only as fast as it is being pumped in... now you could throttle the pump (output side) down if you wanted to control flowrate, no prob with that.
 
G

glazer

Guest
rhomer,
That's very cool buddy!!! Glad it worked out for you, would love to see a pic of the setup.... as far as your nitrates,well that is kinda hard to answer. I don't really know anything much about your setup... rock, fish, feeding, ect., ect. With my setup my nitrates started reading 0 (with three different test kits) after about two weeks... but then you have to remember I have my 'fuge hooked up to a 5 1/2 gallon tank!...lol I do a one gallon water change a week but was still getting a <10 reading pre-refugium. It must be working and I was going for stability and all as I don't have much room for error.
tru conch,
Very cool as well if I was able to be of some help. But as Melbourne stated... we were talking about acrylic/plastic! Standard hole saws aint gonna do it on the glass, you need diamond bits for that... and I have drilled glass before, it's not as bad as you may think. Check out www.harborfreight.com for good bits and good pricing if you are gonna tackle the glass thing.
Oh, and last.... if you DO do a setup similiar to mine, you don't want to regulate your return, you mentioned using a ball valve for the return line.... with an overflow, the water is gonna leave only as fast as it is being pumped in... now you could throttle the pump (output side) down if you wanted to control flowrate, no prob with that.
 
tru conch

tru conch

Active Member
my mistake, i meant to say arcylic. i had a rough weekend, so im still kinda groggy. i did drill some arclyic for a divider on another fuge last night. i went with a rubber maid for the gravity fuge. did the drilling and tested out my bulkhead fittings (they are water tight!) so im advancing to the final stage of the set up now. hahaha.
again thanks for the info
ps glazer, what kind of light are you using? i have some small NO's laying around, im probably just going to use them.
wish i had a camera, i would post some pics.
 
G

glazer

Guest
tru conch,
Whew, glad you DID mean plastic and didn't try to drill glass with a reg holesaw... could have been a disaster!...lol Hey congrats on your NON-leaking fittings, WooHoo, time to celebrate... wait, that might lead to another "rough" weekend...scratch that,hehe.
As far as lighting gos.... if more people jump on here I am sure you will get a wide range of responses. Personally I just have a 13watt 6500K power compact over mine... seems more than adequate. I have good growth from the macro's, all four kinds and I now have spots of coraline everywhere! I have talked to other people about the 'fuge thing since it is new to me as well and one is just using "gro-light" NO tubes (two 20watters) and his setup is flourishing as well.
 
tru conch

tru conch

Active Member
glazer, thanks for the reply. i know the lighting issue is based on personal experiences. i figured the NO tubes will be fine, since im trying to grow algae, for a change. hahaha.
i will probably go with some grape capluara and some small red mangroves as well, along will some other macro algea.
again i cant say thanx enough everyone on this board, i have learned sooooo much!
ps glazer, im like you, i love to tinker around with my set-ups, thinking of new improvements to make. this hobby certainly allows for that! part of the reason i enjoy it. :)
 
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