sump and refuge

[marine7198]

hello i have a 29 gallon reef tank been up for about 7 months and i would like to do a sump and refuge setup but i dont have a drilled tank, i know ill need an overflow box but what else do i need to complete the system, i want to put all my equipment in the sump i have a heater, skimmer, hob filter. is any of this worth it at this point? and then how do i get the water to the refuge? also another question...can u put a bag of live sand in a tank thats already established? thanks

 

[sly]

Yes you can put in the live sand. Just do it carefully so that you don't create a sand storm.
You already stated that you need an overflow. You will need to do some plumbing to get the water to the refugium... On my tank, I used 3/4" PVC piping and used a T fitting to split the water coming from the tank. Some of goes to the sump and some of it goes to the fuge. I used a ball valve to control the water going to the fuge. You want a low water flow in a regugium generally and the ball valve is to control that...
You need a system pump to pump the water back to your tank. I personally like the mag drive pump. It's very reliable, inexpensive and quiet. Iwaki also makes very good pumps but they are more expensive.
Your HOB filter probably has a some sort of biological filter in it. I would continue to use this until your sump gets up and running. It takes bacteria about a month to adjust to a tank and so your sump won't be able to properly filter the tank at first... so keep the HOB filter for awhile.
The other items such as your skimmer and heaters would be fine in the sump. With a sump, you can use larger filters and so you might look at getting a bigger skimmer if the one you have is not big enough.