Sump

[frankenbakon]

I have a friend who is going to help me build a sump unless I can find a premade one.. My question is about the height of the sump the space I have to work with under the stand is 15w 17d and about 15-16 tall how tall should it be and I'm still a bit confused as to the benefit of a skimmer vs a refugium

All help is appreciated

 

[hnguyen]

you want enough head room to be able to take your skimmer in and out in case you need to clean. Other then that, I'd go as high as I can since it will hold more water. I also run a skimmer and a fuge, I believe there are things that a skimmer can't remove but a fuge can depending on what you grow in it. I grow cheato in mine, can't remember what their good for but I just know their good. :/

 

[smallblock]

pick out the skimmer you will be using and build around that, unless you will have an external skimmer

 

[jeffmuse]

FrankenBakon;640362 wrote: I have a friend who is going to help me build a sump unless I can find a premade one.. My question is about the height of the sump the space I have to work with under the stand is 15w 17d and about 15-16 tall how tall should it be and I'm still a bit confused as to the benefit of a skimmer vs a refugium

All help is appreciated

If you have a very limited area to work under the stand, I would go for a nice skimmer over a refugium. I think that a fuge will certainly help keep your nitrates down and add a few other benefits as well; however, nothing can replace a good skimmer. When picking a skimmer, look at the foot print of the unit you are buying... this will show you the actual amount of space that the skimmer will take up in the sump.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it is sometimes better to go with a smaller sump and plumb your return pump externally. This will help dramatically with keeping the temps in the tank lower.

As far as height goes, you want the sump to be fairly high as the more water volume the better. Keep in mind though, that you are going to be doing a lot of maintenance in this area, so you need to have room to work under the stand (don't make it too high )

 

[hnguyen]

JeffMuse;640389 wrote: If you have a very limited area to work under the stand, I would go for a nice skimmer over a refugium. I think that a fuge will certainly help keep your nitrates down and add a few other benefits as well; however, nothing can replace a good skimmer. When picking a skimmer, look at the foot print of the unit you are buying... this will show you the actual amount of space that the skimmer will take up in the sump.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it is sometimes better to go with a smaller sump and plumb your return pump externally. This will help dramatically with keeping the temps in the tank lower.

As far as height goes, you want the sump to be fairly high as the more water volume the better. Keep in mind though, that you are going to be doing a lot of maintenance in this area, so you need to have room to work under the stand (don't make it too high )

+1, yup he's spot on. I just picked up the Marineland 93 cube and the stand on that tank is fairly short. My sump will only hold about 20 gallons of water and has no room for a fuge. So what the guy I got it from did was fit the biggest skimmer he could in there and ran and external fuge. My skimmer is sitting flat on the sump and the collection cup has about 1/4" if even clearance to the top of the stand. The good thing about this skimmer is that the cup slides out instead of pulling up to come out. So I could get away with the 1/4" clearance. Then the fuge itself holds about 10-12 gallons of water also, so now I have about 30 gallons of water volume for my sump/fuge combine. The guy I got it from did a great job at it so there really wasn't much thinking I had to do. He turned a small sump within a limited space stand into something that holds much more water then most with bigger stand foot print. My skimmer takes up half my sump. powerful as hell and pulls gunk out that will make you gag.

 

[frankenbakon]

Well I've got a tunze 9002 in the main tank that I'll move down and I think at 16 inches it should still have enough room to come out... Thx so much for all the info

Edit: Also I guess I'll just turn the ac70 I have into a diy hob fuge