I have a 54 gallon bow front that I am converting to saltwater. I can only with a 10 gallon diy sump and refugium. Is this big enough? The skimmer will take up alot of room. So I don't know what to do. Should I modify the stand?
10 gal sump with refugium
- Thread starter Arom0024
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RJinPV
Active Member
First priority in a sump is for it to contain all the water if the return pump is off without overflowing. I have a 55 gallon tank and my sump's volume change is 2.4 gallons when the return pump is shut off. That's about a 2.75 inch level rise in a standard 10 gallon. So if the normal water level in the sump is 8 inches to make the skimmer work properly like mine, then the water level will increase to about 10.75 inches in a 12 inch tall sump. Large enough but not much margin. My sump is 12" wide x 23" long. I have a skimmer and sock in one chamber, a refugium in the middle, a bubble trap and then a return pump section. To get all that in a 20" x 10" gallon is really going to be tight. You'll need a small footprint skimmer to get a sock and skimmer in one section to leave room for a refugium chamber. You could probably do it without a refugium chamber by having the skimmer in your middle section. Are you sure you can't go bigger?
malacoda
Valuable Member
What is your goal for having the refugium?
If it's to reduce nitrates and phosphates, I would just skip it and use the space to have larger skimmer and return sections instead. A fuge that size won't do squat to help lower nutrient levels (they have to be quite large to consume enough nutrients to have a noticeable impact - very, very rough estimate is 20% of DT size at the very least -- more basic info here and here). In fact, having a refugium that is too small can sometimes be worse than not having one at all (it acts as detritus trap that has to be cleaned just as often as the DT). But, if you can fit a decent skimmer into that size sump, it will have a noticeable impact on nutrients.
As RJinPV mentioned though, if the sump doesn't have enough spare capacity to safely handle all the DT water that drains down when the return pump is off, it will be useless -- you'll have a flood every time you turn the pump off to do any kind of tank maintenance.
If it's to reduce nitrates and phosphates, I would just skip it and use the space to have larger skimmer and return sections instead. A fuge that size won't do squat to help lower nutrient levels (they have to be quite large to consume enough nutrients to have a noticeable impact - very, very rough estimate is 20% of DT size at the very least -- more basic info here and here). In fact, having a refugium that is too small can sometimes be worse than not having one at all (it acts as detritus trap that has to be cleaned just as often as the DT). But, if you can fit a decent skimmer into that size sump, it will have a noticeable impact on nutrients.
As RJinPV mentioned though, if the sump doesn't have enough spare capacity to safely handle all the DT water that drains down when the return pump is off, it will be useless -- you'll have a flood every time you turn the pump off to do any kind of tank maintenance.
