**Pls Help! Need sump/fuge advice

[tonyj]

Hello all. I have a 125g tank, currently FOWLR.... slowly but surely trying to get in a position to set up as a reef tank. I have had really high trates for a while now... so im adding a fuge. Here is a pic of the fuge as I have planned it... I am doing it myself using my 30gal acrylic tank that was previously acting as my sump. Here is a ROUGH pic of what I planned, please tell me what you think!!!

Here is what I was thinking: Water from the display tank would flow in on the left and overflow out of the intake area into the fuge (that is LRR and chaeto, in case you were wondering), and then flow into the return area where it is skimmed and returned to the display tank.
If this first sump/fuge works ok, I will add a second 20g sump/ fuge on the opposite side of the cabinet with 2 compartments... one compartment (fuge) with chaeto, caulerpa, and DSB, and the other with just LRR. What do you think? please provide feedback!

 

[ameno]

I just finish building a sump fuge out of a 30 gal tank, it works great, the one thing I see that I would do different is put a divider between the sump and skimmer, because the shimmer will create air bubbles that would get pumped back into your tank. On the system I built I had the skimmer in the first compartment , then a divider from the top down to about an inch from the bottom, the second divider is 1.5" over and goes from the bottom to were I wanted the water level in the skimmer compartment. this keeps the air bubbles out. I then made a sump compartment, some few inches wider then the pump. then I put in a single divider between the sump area and refuge. the top has slots cut in it to keep sails and such from going over into the sump. to feed the system I have a line that tees with a valve on each branch. one line goes to the sump compartment and the other goes to the fuge, that way some water is skimmed and some is sent thru the fuge. and the valves help adjust how much water goes into each section. Hope this helps