Bubbles in refugium

[philosophile]

So I just set up my refugium yesterday.... And I'm getting massive amounts of bubbles from my overflow, which isn't bad in of itself, but they're causing a lot of "spray" around the refugium. The light and eggcrate it rests on are getting covered with water.

Any suggestions on minimizing this?

[philosophile]

here's a quick video of the setup. In the first 30 seconds I think you can see what I mean by the water spray.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyW5yis3ZFc

[chimmike]

well, first, too much flow through the fuge. You don't want the full tank overflow going into the sump. IMO you don't want the overflow dumping into the sump to begin with, i prefer it being fed from the return pump.

second, the pipe sticks too far down into the fuge. Cut it maybe 1" below the water line.

[philosophile]

hmmm.. well, I'm not sure if I can accomodate the first suggested change, but I can easily cut the pipe an inch shorter.

I couldn't really figure out how to plumb the stuff, without it actually being attached to the overflow, and such. Now that its all plumbed in there, the only way for me to get it all out, is for me to cut it out, and start over, which would be an amazing PITA for me.... As it is, it took 3 days to do that for me.

I was taking in all the suggestions I could, this was what I could do, particularly because I was limited to the size of the tank I could put under my set up (10 gallon tank was the max, since any other tank would be too wide for the stand, and the bottom of the stand could not be removed, as it provided stability).

If I were to T the overflow, I'd need a three part sump, which the 10 gallon was too small for.

So yeah. Its what I have. I was thinking of putting some saran wrap around the bubbly half of the fuge to protect the light, and maybe keep some of that water in (or at the very least off the carpet).

[IMM3DOORSDOWN]

ok just my 2 cents just call it a sump.a refuge has a deep sand bed with cheto and slow flow.you could add this to you system in the future is super beneficial.what i would do to your sump add some live rock to your first chamber. to reduce the splash have you tried putting the pvc in a filter sock??

also the youtube clip awesome.way better then pics.

[philosophile]

Hmmm I'll try the filter sock on the pvc. I was also thinking of maybe trying to add a T to the end of the PVC to help distribute the flow a little more. That might help with the bubbles too.

Thanks for the + on the video. I just got a ipod touch, and thought that would be way more helpful than a bunch of pictures. I'm glad it was!

[chimmike]

I think the plumbing stuff, the planning comes with experience. I always use unions and ballvalves so that I can disassemble and clean/re-do plumbing as needed if something doesn't work optimally, rather than building and gluing it all so that it's permanent.

[Uncle Salty 05]

How many GPH is your return pump pushing?
If it is over 250 it is too much.
A simple ball valve on your return line could throttle it back and minimize your bubble problem. Adding a T to the end of your drain would help as well.

[DeepSeaBeauti]

Well from the looks of things (my two cents). I know with my CPR overflow if the drain is not completly under water from the tank it produces a masive amount of bubbles in my sump. I also run my drain into a seperate chamber i built to house just it and some bio-balls full of carbon. Another thing you may want to try is to have the overflow go into your skimmer, and have it return to the sump. That should elliminate the splash, and also a pump. That is always good.