Questions on Skimmers

[rhomer]

I haven't posted here in sometime. I've been in straight maintenance mode for the past 2 years, but I think it's time for a change. I curently have a 90 gallon drilled tank with a sea life system 75 sump, home made refuge and calcium reactor. Things have gone well until the protiem skimmer pump melted and I lost some corals.
Most have returned but the skimmer is pretty much toast. What I'd like to do is remove the refuge (this is just too much hastle and will overflow every couple of months), and replace it with a full size skimmer. Is there any good skimmer I can run in line with my return pump? Or will in need to fully replace my sump and re-do my layout. I need to a larger return pump anyway. I've been running my mag 5 for quite a while and need to upgrade to a mag 9.5.
I would also like to remove my powerheads and convert my mag 5 to a closed loop pump.
Any suggestions are welcome, but the main question is about the skimmer.

 

[gregzbobo]

most skimmers can't be run in-line, they need to have a free flow outlet direct into a sump or HOB back into the tank. If you are set on getting rid of the refugium (refugiums are good if you can tackle the overflow problem) you could maybe fit a skimmer in your sump. I've no idea how much room you have to work with, but the ASM skimmers (euroreef clones) are pretty nice, and pretty reasonable to purchase as well. The mag 5 as a closed loop would be cool, but perhaps you could keep a couple powerheads and put flo rotators on them, the corals would really love that.

 

[rhomer]

Sump is pretty small. There really isn't room to work in it at all. I think it holds 8 gallons.

 

[rhomer]

Problem with the overflow on the refuge is that things happen the to stop the flow from the return of the sump. Then the refuge stops getting filled for a while. Then when I think to check and see the water level is down I readjust the valve. Unfortuantly the growth has clogged the drain and a couple hours later 5 gallons of water in the basement.
The thought is I have limited room below my tank and it's really crammed. I'm thinking of getting a 20-30 gallon tank and set it up as the sump. Remove the existing one and the refuge. This will give me a lot of room to work with. Then setup a much better skimmer instead of the refuge. This would give me approx 20 gallons below instead of 8. Perhaps if the tank is big enough I could put in 4 chambers.
1) water entry (in sump skimmer)
2) bio balls
3) refuge
4) return
My fear is too much flow across the refuge.