switching from wet dry trickle filter to a refugium

ccws

ccws

Member
My tank has been up and running for 3 weeks. After reading many of the posts here and getting alot of advice from Birdy, I am considering making a change. My tank is 3 weeks old and I figure making the change now would be easier than making it later. I currently have 4 blue green chromis that were used to kickstart the cycle. I also have 10 mexican hermit crabs and 10 turbo snails. (Being a newbie I made the mistake of listening to the LFS and starting with these fish.
)
I am not really sure if my tank has cycled. I think that it may have. I had a very small ammonia spike to 0.25 and a small nitrite spike to 0.05. The ammonia and nitrite are now 0 and the Nitrate is in the 2.5-12.5 range.
Anyway how does one switch to a refugium? My tank dimensions are 24x24x24 so my stand is small and I dont really have room for both under my tank. I also dont have room for an over the tank refugium and even if I did, my wife would kill me because of the way it looks. It seems that a hang on refugium would be too small for my tank and I dont really have any hang on room left although I guess I could move my hang on skimmer to the sump.
Can I run my tank without any other filtration other than a skimmer and a refugium? The conscienious marine aquarists recommends some other type of flitration. Do I just get rid of my trickle filter and start the refugium? It seems to be drastic to me to get rid off all of my bioballs and put a new refugium with new live sand and algae.
Thanks and sorry for the long post.
 
misslaina

misslaina

Member
well I have both. I split my sump with a cheap tank spliter thing (I guess it is plastic with pinholes all in it and fitter things on the sides). I put a light under there, cheato (macroalgae), and live rock rubble and some live sand too. now the water flows into fuge, then through the plastic thing and to the pump.
it seems to be working really well, and my nitrates are falling.
 
ccws

ccws

Member
I dont know how I could convert my sump to be both a wet dry trickle and a refugium. One half of the sump is bioballs. In th other half is my heater and pump and they take up a good portion of this. With dividers there wouldnt be much room left for the refug. I would rather get reid of the the whole thing and get a dedicated refug., if that is reasonable.
 
ccws

ccws

Member
Any one else have any ideas? Can I just do away with my wet dry filter and put a refugium in its place?
 
dirtee147

dirtee147

Member
I have been trying to get this ? answerd for a few days and have not had any luck. so good luck you have had more replys than me so I will be waching this one.
 
ccws

ccws

Member
I hope we can both get an answer.
I dont know if this is a really stupid question or one that is difficult to answer.
Thanks for reading
 
dirtee147

dirtee147

Member
I have been loking at pics on this and other sites and from what I can gather it can be done I have not got a straight answer but other people have done it why can't we? I'm just not shure what size it should be .
 
birdy

birdy

Active Member
yes people do convert their wet/dry's into refugiums. usually you take the bioballs out slowly, just a few every week, as long as you have plenty of LR this should not effect the biological filtration of the system. After you have all the bioballs out, then take the drip plate out.
The bioball section can then be converted to a fuge by putting some LS in the bottom a few pieces of LR and some macro algae, you will also need a light for the algae to grow (I recommend lighting a fuge 24/7)
without seeing your systems it is hard to say exactly how to do it. One big issue is the amount of flow going through the sump, you don't want a lot of turbulance in the fuge stirring up sand and stuff. That is the biggest issue I can see, if you can figure out a way to partition the water coming into the sump that would help.
 
ccws

ccws

Member
I have that question too. I am thinking about adding a refugium in parallel to my we dry. SO I would have 2 skimmer boxes and water returns. A 10 gallon tank would fit nicely next to my wet dry trickle for my 60 gallon tank.
 
birdy

birdy

Active Member
CCWS- How big is the pump on your return? if there is enough flow then you could just split the overflow line and have part of it going to your wet/dry and the other part going to the refugium. Then you can pump the water from the fuge back into your tank.
 
ccws

ccws

Member
Birdy
I have a 4100 L/h pump. The thing is big so I think it will be able to do this. But I do not understand the details of this.
1. how do I split the line from the overflow box?
2. How does the water return from both the sump and the refugium?
Thanks for responding.
 
ccws

ccws

Member
Originally Posted by Birdy
CCWS- How big is the pump on your return? if there is enough flow then you could just split the overflow line and have part of it going to your wet/dry and the other part going to the refugium. Then you can pump the water from the fuge back into your tank.

I think I understand, so instead of 2 skimmer boxes, I could probably buy some pvc fitting at the depot that splits the return so 2 hoses can be hooked up. Then the fuge and the sump each have a pump that returns the water to the tank. I just dont understand what the size of my current pump has to do with anything.
 
jokerj

jokerj

Member
Do a search in this fourm using Refuge you will find all kinds of drawings of diffrent fuge setups!
 
birdy

birdy

Active Member
Sorry I made that confusing, the size of your sump pump doesn't matter at all, I was thinking of something then changed my mind.
I would hard plumb or use spa flex for your overflow lines, you will need to put a ball valve on the side that feeds the refugium, you do not want a ton of flow going through the fuge, maybe 10X turnover, so don't get a HUGE return pump for that. You can also just pipe the return from the fuge back into your sump if you want, you don't have to go all the way to the tank.
 
ccws

ccws

Member
Could you explain to me what you mean by hard plumb ? Also I am not sure what spa flex is.
Where does the ball valve go? Does that go into the tubing that goes into the fuge near the skimmer box? Also where would I get a ball valve?
Thanks again for all of your help.
 
birdy

birdy

Active Member
hard plumbing as in schedule 40 white pvc, spa flex is white pvc tubing that is a bit flexible but you can still glue hard pvc fittings to it.
Here is a very very rough sketch, as I don't know what your setup looks like this is just an example.
 
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