Questions on Refugium?

[Iostream]

I am seting up a new tank, finally upgrading the one I have. Now that I can actually use plumbing, I will be using an undertank sump and skimmer, and was wanting to add a refugium. Unfortunately there is no where that I can put a refugium so that it can gravity feed to the tank due to WAF. My main reasons for wanting a refugium are algae growth for my tang, and pods, etc. to feed a mandarin. If I plumb the refugium after the sump, before the pump will any pods survive the trip back into the tank? Will this meet my purpose at all?

Thanks,
Iostream

Iostream's Reef (http://www.linuxtx.org)

[clown-t]

i have a 30 gal long sump with a refugium and my tank has tons of pods. i would say some don't make it but a bunch do

[bahrhoops]

Iostream,
I have a split refugium/sump under my tank along the lines of what you are describing , I would recommend the overflow flow into the refugium part , then over a wall into the sump section .
check out a pic of my setup here : http://defcon200.bizland.com/friendstanks/id1.html
- good luck
steve

[rscotth]

What kind of pump do you use to return water back to the tank? How many gph are flowing through your refugium? I am planning the same setup but wanted more waterflow so that I could take out the powerheads.

[BOBG]

With Dave Grigors help, we built a 60 x 16 x 16 sump/ refugium. It is divided into 3 compartments. My durso standpipes flow into the first compartment where the skimmer is located, it flows into the second where the refugium is located. We then place a floss filter before the third compartment that houses two mag& pumps, both on seperate circuits incase one goes down(which did happen) the system worked great when one of the Mag 7's failed and blew a breaker.
http://www.geocities.com/bubba_lou_in_mn/Bobs_Reef_Tank_.html

You can't see it very well here, but you can get the idea. I need a better camera and need to update my page.

[Iostream]

Thanks for the responses, I will be using a Titanium T4 pump for return, and have spent most of the evening building the new stand. I think the way I will plumb it is to have a 1 1/4" pipe between the sump and refugium for open flow, then I will have the return pump coming from the refugium. The only downside is the water level has to be the same in both sump and refugium, but the way around this is to raise the sump a few inches, so that the water level in the refugium will be a bit higher. All in all it should work out though there will be a couple of plumbing tests before I begin moving my tank into the house and migrating the contents of my 70 gallon into the new tank. Once all is said and done it will be well documented on the website.

Iosteam.