Sump/Refuge

For those who havent been keeping up with my threads, i am in the process of building a sump that is in my closet and the display tank is in my room (not in the closet lol). Anyways, if i want to keep macro algae in this sump, what kind of lighting is required? its a 20 gallon sump. I have a 26 watt and a 15 watt. Can i do just the 15? i have NO idea what type of lighting they need to survive.

 

forget that question about the lighting because i just found out. but any cool ideas what i can do with this sump? its just a 20 gallon tank with 2 filters, a heater, liverock, and a return pump. no separators nothing complex at all. Anything else i could grow in there? should i buy livesand for it?

 

Depends on the bulb and the K rating. You can use everywhere from 5100-6500k rating bulbs. Luna

 

Opps, I didnt read this thread until I posted the other one. Your gonna need some kind of compartment to separate the macroalgae(MA) from the skimmer, RP and so on. If not, your going to find your MA clogging up your skimmer's pump and RP. Luna

 

hold on. i dont have a skimmer and i dont know what a RP is. And forget the macro algae idea...

Thanks,
Ryan

 

RP=return pump
MA=macroalgae
DT=display tank
;D

 

haha ok thanks for the legend. And do i still need some sort of separator? if so, how should i go upon doing this? when i get a return pump, im going to have it a couple inches above the water surface (raised by PVC piping).

And another question. Say my overflow takes out 600 gph. And say the gph lost while getting the water back to the tank is 500. So, as long as i get a pump bigger than 600 gph, i should be good? because no matter how much water is being pumped back in, it will just be taken out because of the overflow. And if i go too little of a pump, the sump will overflow because too much water is being taken out before it could be put back in. Is this correct??? my overall point was that i cant have too big of a pump? unless im like 300 gph above

Thanks,
Ryan

 

I didnt understand what you said in the first half, but the second half is no.
Lets say that your overflow(OF) is rated for 600gph and you buy I return pump(RP) that is rated for 300gph. You will have only 300gph going through the OF. What you can not do is get a RP that is rated over 600gph or your DT will overflow. The same amount of flow that goes up, will go down. Hope I made sense.



[SCROLL]Luna;D[/SCROLL]

 

yes, you made sense but what i dont get is how is a pump going to take my water from my closet, up 7 feet and to my tank? i would lose so much GPH in the process. how much GPH do you recommend to start off with for the RP?

 

i think i read somewhere on here that a refugium should flow about 5-10% the display tank's volume per hour. so if your DT is a 55 you only need 5.5-11 gph. someone correct me if i'm wrong but that sounds really easy to accomplish.

~Will.