to fuge or not to fuge...

[NYPDFrogman]

That is the question!
my steel for my stand will be here on monday and I'm sitting down trying to design a new sump for my 270 (72L X 36W X 24 T)

I'm trying to design a sump that will be easy to maintain, easy to change out socks, plenty of room for my gravity fed recir mod G4+

I'm not sure if I want to go with a fuge again or just run a series of posaban reactors with carbon, phosaban, I like polyfilters too.

any thoughts?

 

[grundig5]

Im done with fuges. Everytime I blow a little bit of water around in there, so much detritus kicks up that my tank clouds for hours. I have TONS of life in there, sand sifters, crabs, snails, etc etc and no matter what, detritus settles all over it and is impossible to fix. This has been my experience time and time again and still I always end up running a fuge. Not again! My new tanks sump has a small chamber to tumble chaetomorpha and possibly provide a spot for detritus to settle which I can vacuum out easily (NO SAND). Other than that, I am done with fuges and plan to run a heavy skimmer and lots of carbon/phosban.

 

[meschaefer]

Im done with fuges. Everytime I blow a little bit of water around in there, so much detritus kicks up that my tank clouds for hours. I have TONS of life in there, sand sifters, crabs, snails, etc etc and no matter what, detritus settles all over it and is impossible to fix. This has been my experience time and time again and still I always end up running a fuge. Not again! My new tanks sump has a small chamber to tumble chaetomorpha and possibly provide a spot for detritus to settle which I can vacuum out easily (NO SAND). Other than that, I am done with fuges and plan to run a heavy skimmer and lots of carbon/phosban.

This has been my experience as well, and my current tank does not have one.

That being said, I am toying with the idea a running a true refugium solely for pod production. The refugium will be higher than my main tank and will gravity feed into the display.

 

[NYPDFrogman]

the only reason I'm considering a "fuge" is a place for some cheato and place for pods to grow.

I'm going to have dual 2" drains on this tank and a smaller 1.5" drain to gravity feed my skimmer

on my present set up one drain splits I have a sock on the skimmer compartment but no sock on fuge side and no matter what i do I have detrius in my sump return area

 

[meschaefer]

If you just want it to provide a place for cheato, your could partitin part of the sump off with a removable baffle. That way if you decide that it is not working out, you could just remove the baffle and be done with it.



p.s. how is that sohal doing, that was nice looking fish if you hadn't beaten me to it I would have scooped him up.

 

[JLAudio]

i definitly support some chaeto in some part of thank for nutrient reduction and pod housing, but as far as the whole fuge, I think it isnt necessary. I would opt for a good skimmer and phos reactor

 

[NYPDFrogman]

If you just want it to provide a place for cheato, your could partitin part of the sump off with a removable baffle. That way if you decide that it is not working out, you could just remove the baffle and be done with it.



p.s. how is that sohal doing, that was nice looking fish if you hadn't beaten me to it I would have scooped him up.

he's doing great tempted now to go with an 8' tank instead of a 6' tank
:bablefish
I'm pretty sure I'm not going to do the DSB in a fuge area.
I'm thinking an area in sump for cheato and some LR
I want to be able to filter the water entering that area with a sock

 

[tosiek]

I thought i read somewhere to increase the flow in the fuge to account for dietrius and stuff settling =0) or to vacuum or sift through a filter sock the area regularly.

Ive seen a bigger delay between Po4 spikes between phosban changes when i get lazy since i turned a frag tank into a sorta fuge. I also have increased waste in the system due to a 8 legged friend making a messy dinner the same time i converted the tank to a sorta-fuge.

 

[fernandokng]

How do I make remove baffles? Is this by using the weatherseal tape (or something along that line?)

If you just want it to provide a place for cheato, your could partitin part of the sump off with a removable baffle. That way if you decide that it is not working out, you could just remove the baffle and be done with it.



p.s. how is that sohal doing, that was nice looking fish if you hadn't beaten me to it I would have scooped him up.

 

[meschaefer]

How do I make remove baffles? Is this by using the weatherseal tape (or something along that line?)

My last sump was acrylic. What I did was used some scrap acrylic to make a channel that the baffle slid into.