Building a custom Refugium

I have been reading through the posts here, and I have a few quick questions...

I am going to build a refugium 24"L x 10"W x 10"H, Im using these dimensions due do specific space requirements. I will be drawing and returning water from the sump in my "Reactor Room" so I will have precise control over the flow rate into the new refugium.

With this setup I will only have about 8" of acutal water depth to play with, figure a few inches of sand/mud, etc... base and that leaves me with 6" or so. How much water depth do you need??

As far as lighting goes, I have an unsed power compact lighting system from an old tank that I was thinking of using, but we are talking 100w of lighting on this thing... Is that too much lighting?? what would be the down side??

PS... this is on a 90g tank

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

It would be better if you were using the water for the fuge right from your OF's so that it gets all the nutrients to absorb instead of the sump where the skimmer is working.

 

Thanks for that advice. I will pull it from the pre-filter/bubble trap in the sump. That is an isolated chamber before the main sump body where the water from the overflow enters the sump.

 

Started construction on the refugium today... being sort of a crazy DIY guy, I decided to build a dual chamber refugium, it will be fed by a hang on water rail with adjustable ports to have precise control over flow rates in each chamber. one chamber I will use sand, mud in the other. guess we will see how it turns out. I'll put up construction pics when I have some if anyone would like to see them

 

Just FYI, check out thread "Building a custom Refugium -- part 2" if your interested in seing the new fuge