quick question on plumbilg my skimer

[Reef N Discus]

Well I have a reef octopus recurc skimer that I am going to plumb externaly and feed the out put into the rufugium section of my sump. Well I had planed on using a small power head for the feed, it requiers like 150 gph very low flow. My question is this I had heard it is best to use a direct feed from the drain but I had a couple of concerns about this, one was will the drain flow be steady enough I will not have an over flow situation once I dial it in I had heard this can happen. The second most importan question is how do you keep large debris from your over flow going directly into your skimers properly is it advisabke to use some kind of stariner on my durso? If I do not feel totaly cofortable I will probaly just use the feed pump power head placed in the section where water first enters the sump.

I look forward and thank you for your advice and thoughts.

[dkh0331]

I've fed my H&S directly from my drain line for several years. I have a gate valve before the skimmer to regulate the water flow into the skimmer.

Never a problem with large particles into the skimmer.

[Reef N Discus]

Ok cool I am still thinking about at least putting on a strainer type thing they sell for dursos and bulk heads just to be on the safe side. That would suck if something did happen to get in there and mess up my simer pump.

[jeff@zina.com]

I had planed on using a small power head for the feed...

One major issue here is that you are pumping out of the tank and pumping back to the tank from the sump/refugium. This means you need to balance the pumps. Using an overflow with gravity feed to the skimmer/sump means you have only a single pump and it's always balanced.

Unless I read this wrong and you are pumping out of the sump and the skimmer is flowing back into the same sump.

Jeff

[Reef N Discus]

One major issue here is that you are pumping out of the tank and pumping back to the tank from the sump/refugium. This means you need to balance the pumps. Using an overflow with gravity feed to the skimmer/sump means you have only a single pump and it's always balanced.

Unless I read this wrong and you are pumping out of the sump and the skimmer is flowing back into the same sump.

Jeff

Iam not seeing an issue here, this is what I will have going on. A three section sump the middle section which is actually large enough for an in sump skimer if I decided to go that route. This is where the over flow from the main DT will flow into then the last section will have an external return pump plumbed to return the water to the main dt. The first section will be a refugium and I plan on throwing a small power head in the middle section where the over flow from the main DT flows into and I will direct the output of the skimer into the refugium which has teeth cut into it to over flow into the middle section were it will mix again with the overflow from the main DT. Now most of this flow will contimue on into the bubble trap then into the third section to the return pump. I suppose some will also get picked back up by the small power head which feeds the skimer which feeds the fuge and the cycle continues on like this over and over again. The power head will probably be a 180gph power head or a small rio pump and the return pump will be either a turbo sea by coralife or a mag pump at about 6 - 700gph so the feed of the feed pump for the skimmer is a slower rate than the return pump so I don't think this will be an issue I dont really see it being an issue even if the feed pump to the skimer was faster than the return pump there would be no over flow or anything becuase it only has a certain amount of water to draw from so it really would not make a diference but the recurcilating skimers requires a slow flow to work anyways. Does this clear it up any? Do you see an issue with this now that I expalined it better?