refugium

[ceemo]

I am thinking of taking on the task of building my own refugium under my tank does anyone have any helpfull hints or any instructions on how to go about this kind of task.
ceemo:confused:

[LVfishguy]

I guess it depends on what you are looking to do. You can just go out and get a 20 gallon tank and go from there. It really just depends on what type of fuge you are looking at doing...

[opihi]

Hey C:
there's a nice section about refugiums in AC's Reef Invertebrates. have you read that already?

[ceemo]

I have read AC's Refugiums and there are so many diffrent ways of setting one up that I thought that I would get some general imput of what others had had good luck with before I start my journey.
Here is what I have
75 Gallon glass with wooden stand. The stand only has the doubble doors in the middle and acessing the space below is not to practical.
I run a 404 fuval for filtration and a prisim skimmer I also have two powerheads for circulation.
My filter must be placed in the center for easy access, skimmer and powerheads are on the tank. BUT ther are endless miles of power cords and I don't like having them over any type of water.
In my tank I have a
Orange Sholder Surgeonfish
Two Percula clowns
two firefish
three gobys
one yellow headed jaw fish
one six line wrasse
three green chromis
80 to 100 lb's of rock
I also have several mushrooms, ricordia,
stony and soft polyps and several hitch hiker corals that I have no clue what they are.
I also have some sort of oysters and a bunch of baby spiny oysters.
I also have Halimeda in my tank and this is where the problem begins it is taking over my tank. There is at least one new plant that pops up each week and the exsisting ones are growing new leaves at the rate of 1 every two days or so and that is on all the branches no just one branch.
So I need somthing that will either hang on the back of my tank ( but I do not know how much weight a glass tank will support or I need somthing that I can sit besid my than that will not look like a mess just sitting ther ( it is in my formal living room). I am also not sure if a hang on the backtype will even be large enough to benifit from.

I would like to move my Halimeda in to it and I would also like to utalize it to culture food for my planktonic feeders.

Any input of your experiance and what is working for you would greatly help.
Thank you Camille

[opihi]

Hi Camille:
I'm currently running a powerhead run, gravity returned refugium that sits beside my main tank on a cabinet.

here's a pic from a few years back of my very first system. the refugium i'm running today is set up pretty much the same.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/6327109-0938_IMG.jpg