Aquaclear 500 as refugium??

[jcm1229]

I have a 37 gallon with no room for a sump or refugium below. I've been entertaining the idea of getting an aquafuge HOB refugium. I read a post on another board of using an aquaclear, throwing in some sand and LR and using it as a refugium for pods and caelerpa. Any thoughts??

 

[Rothie]

The 500 would make a fine refugium on that tank, and you can adjust the flow since it will probably be too much for a fuge.I use a 1/2" of crushed coral and some live rock. I keep my heater in there,too.

 

[jcm1229]

What kind of water volume will the 500 hold??

 

[gcvt]

I'm a little too tired to do the math, but you can find the AC500 dimensions here: http://channelcat.netfirms.com/filter-sizes.htm
HTH!

 

[Jawbone]

Did you ever consider putting up a little shelf on the wall above the tank and running a small tank 2G to 5G above your main tank. This will work better for the refugium anyway since your water will be flowing from the refugium to the main tank as opposed to the otherway around. Then all you would need is a small pump to get water into the refugium which you probably already have.

If you get a plastic tank then you would not have to buy any overflow box or anything. Just drill two holes one 1/2" below the other close to the top of the tank, stick some tubing through the holes connect a submerged pump from inside the main tank to the upper hole on the refugium with some flexible tubing and in the lower hole you would run the tubing from the refugium and gravity feed the water back to the main. The tubing will seal the holes with no leakage because the pressure is equalized on both sides.

Now when the pods go swimming around in the refugium they will flow out of the tank through a gravity slide as opposed to running through the pump and up to the tank.

Sorry I got to long winded

 

[ekudl]

I too considered using an AC500 for a refuge but the cost wasn't much different to buy an AquaFuge HOB Refugium. So I did today purchase the 18" one for my 20 Gl Nano and I love the design of it. It cost me about $120 from InlandReef as opposed to about $70 for the AC500. Even if you did get the AC500 you still wouldn't have a good, slow flowing, seperated chambers, ample volume fuge. Spend a little more and get the Aquafuge. Very easy to setup, its runing now. No need to worry about siphons, leakage and everything else. Check it out at http://www.inlandreef.net/aquafuge.html