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C-Dog
12/27/2006, 08:50 PM
hey guys i'm new at this.... my 10g sw tank has been running for about 2.5 months now and i want to build a refugium for it so i can keep my nitrates down and to hide my heater. It will be my first sump which i wanna make out of a 3gal bucket, surface skimmer which attaches to an aquaclear and some powerheads. I would like to know what i need to put in it like compartments or do i just set up a mini tank with macro algea stuff.....


another question is i just went and bout aqualight double linear strip lighting for my tank which has 36 watts.... uhm it seems to get realy realy hot so i was wondering if that was normal??

there 2-18 watt straight pin compact flurescents......

is it normal to get soo hot?

alizarin
12/27/2006, 09:12 PM
First a question - how are you planning on getting the water from the tank to the sump/refugium/bucket? Do you have an overflow?

You can make a refugium out of a bucket without compartments (baffles) but the reason to add them would be that the macro algae will want to get sucked into the pump and bubbles will enter from the pipe from the tank. If you have a screen or sponge on the pump/powerhead then it's doable - I've run setups light that where you just have a maxijet powerhead connected to a vinyl tube. The screen on the maxijet is enough to keep flow but not suck in macro. Are you going to use cheato for the macro algae?

Another thought is just to use the aquaclear as a small refugium... that's somewhat common to do for nanos (I've got one that way on my 10g).

Hot lights - compact flourescents get somewhat hot. My 96w aqualight fixture gets hot but not so much that I can't hold my hand to it. Does the unit have a fan and is it working?

C-Dog
12/27/2006, 10:13 PM
well i'm gonna use an aquaclear surface skimmer which will act as my overflow.... and the surface skimmer will be attached to my aquaclear which is hangint on the bucket... pretty much i'm thinking of getting the water from the tank to the bucket through the skimmer/aquaclear and back to the tank with a powerhead or something. the problem is i dunno a fail safe system to stop it from overflowing if something turns off.... u get it?
right now i don't know what i'm using as my macroalgae
i also want to use the bucket as a refuge to add some water volume to the tank.

the box says use a fan if the canopy is not well ventilated, but the thing is its not in a canopy its resting on 2 peices of wood on top of my tank which i think gives it plenty of ventilation.
lol i dunno what to do mabe its a faulty unit...

alizarin
12/27/2006, 11:03 PM
For that overflow to work you'd have to have the aquaclear pulling water out of the 10g exactly as fast as the powerhead pushes it back in - which is impossible really - otherwise the tank or the bucket will overflow. (sorry!) That's why people always use gravity on one end - the water falls from the tank to the sump (assuming it's lower) - if you use a bigger powerhead to return the water, gravity will just push more water and it stays synchronized. See the animation on this page: http://www.melevsreef.com/allmysumps.html

To do it the gravity way you either drill the tank (which is very hard to do with a 10g - glass too thin and it cracks - I've cracked 3 of them trying!) or you get or make a siphon overflow (which is picture on that page I just mentioned). The other option would be to put the bucket over the tank, install a bulkhead and let it drain back into the tank.

Sorry if I misunderstood what you were trying to do.

About the lights - If it's hot but not so hot you can't hold your hand on it, it's probably fine. If that's not the case I'd add a fan (computer fans or whatever fits the fixture).

C-Dog
12/28/2006, 01:32 PM
ok so i will build an overflow......the same as the one in that link i guess but how big should it be becasue its only a 10g.... i don't think it would have to be that big... mabe like 3-4" wide is good? do u know of any sketches for a sump that could fit a 10g?

i think i'm jsut gonna return the light fixture and figure something else out

C-Dog
12/28/2006, 01:33 PM
by sump i mean overflow lol sorry

C-Dog
12/28/2006, 09:21 PM
k well today i went out and bought a 5.5gal for my sump/ refuge and now i'm workin on gettin my overflow done. dunno exactly how i'm doin that yet tho so hopeflly some1 can help.

also should i add new substrate or should i buy some from the store cuz it takes a while for new substrate to mature and it clouds the water.... what should i do?

alizarin
12/28/2006, 11:12 PM
Here's one somebody did on nano-reef.com
http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=35200&st=20

You could buy one from the for-sale forum here but they're usually really big... not designed for 10g tanks.

alizarin
12/28/2006, 11:21 PM
Substrate - You can add substrate to your tank, the cloudiness is the only negative. To minimize that you can:
* Rinse the new sand out first (that helps some)
* You can let it be cloudy. It won't likely kill anything... just agitate a bit. A filter can shorten the cloudy time. I'm assuming you're using sand from the fish store... sometimes the home depot stuff is so fine that it will stay cloudy for too long.
* You can put the sand in slowly, like 1/4 of the tank a day for 4 days.
* When you add the sand you can put it in a cup and gently pour it in, near the bottom of the tank (as opposed to just pouring it in from the top).... won't stir up as much.

That's what's worked for me anyhow.

Adding the new sand won't mess up anything biologically, it just adds buffering capability and new places for the beneficial bacteria and micro fauna to live. It's not like adding uncured rock - there's nothing to die on the sand.

C-Dog
12/29/2006, 09:22 AM
i just thought with adding new sand it would cause an ammonia spike or something. didn't really care to much bout the cloudyness but i think i'm going to rinse it out and put alittle in at a time.

for my overflow i think i'm gonna do it like this:

http://www.aquariumlife.net/projects/diy-overflow/70.asp

but instead of using breaders i'm just gonna make it out of a black acrylic so that no algea forms. I'm still not 100% on dimensions of it tho.. or bout the sump.