Enough room for a fuge and a skimmer?

Title says it all really. Just wondering if anyone has made a 10 gallon sump with a skimmer and fuge. Thanks in advance.

 

10 gallons are a very tight squeeze but it can be done with a smaller skimmer or a hang on type skimmer. Can you fit anything bigger below your tank?

 

I only have about 24.5" of length and 13" in depth to fit anything so I can only get a 10 gallon without building a custom sump. Do you have any suggestions on which smaller skimmers are good?

 

How big is your DT. Will yo be doing a DSB in the tank as well. Generally the fuge should be about 10% or more of your water volume. If you do a DSB for example, you will only be left with about 5 gallons of water. An HOB skimmer will work but it will be a cramped fit most likely and difficult to do maintenance on depending on the height in your cabinet. You will need space for lighting as well. You could split it in half, get a small in sump skimmer and have the other half with just chaeto, or other macros with enough room on one side to put a light. Space is limited but its doable. I have a 10g under my 55 I just set up the other day. I used to have a big 18g rubbermaid w/ cut outs on top next to the tank but it looked ugly and this is less water volume but so much better hiding under the tank in the cabinet. I have a 3.5-4in deep sand bed (which would of cost me a lot more to do in the rubbermaid bin, chaeto and gracilaria in there with a simple home depot clamp light and a 6500k cfl bulb and I have good growth, gave some chaeto to a couple 3reef members as well. I however have to keep my cpr bak pak skimmer on the DT because it wont fit and even if it did, it would just me cluttered and a pain to access. Good Luck either way, but I would just get an HOB skimmer on your tank, especially if you have a canopy to hide it and use that 10g for a fuge only.

 

Karma to you dadaAtlanta I appreciate your help. I have a 29 gallon DT and I was just going to do a fuge with a DSB and return but read about the benefits of both a skimmer and fuge, but think I am just going to get a skimmer at a later date when I get some extra funds. My tank is currently running so when I get done with the sump/fuge build can I just throw in some sand, rock in the fuge, and some salt water from my LFS in the sump and start the pump and siphon? Sorry if that sounds like a dumb Q but I want to make sure I go about it in the right way. I have about 4 feet of head so I was going to throw in a pump pushing around 600gph and thinking it will end up being ~300-400gph with head loss and my over flow will be around 300gph. Sound about right to those with more experience? Thanks all.

 

I don't disagree with the other comments in here but here are my thoughts.

In a 10 gallon tank with a skimmer and return area I don't believe you have enough room for a meaningful refugium unfortunately. Throwing a handful of chaeto into a sump isn't going to be a meaningful source of nutrient export and you'll just be running a light for no real gain IMO. You could probably throw some extra live rock in there and have a sort of cryptic refugium for critters to reproduce in without predators which I think can be more valuable than a little bit of macro algae.

If anything I would make your return pump section larger so you can go longer than 24 hours without the pump running dry from evaporation, even if you have an ATO, what if the ATO breaks down for some reason you want some time to notice and correct it. Remember you need to leave enough room in the sump for all the backsiphoning water from the tank when the return pump and skimmer are turned off so you can't run the sump with a really high level normally.

300gph is the most I would put through a sump for a 29g tank. I think 150-250 is probably better, I think anything more than that is just wasted electricity on the return pump, you just need enough flow to go through the sump to provide good filtration, if your skimmer feed pump does any less water processing than your return pump you're probably wasting energy on your return pump.
It's a good idea to put a valve on the outlet of the return pump anyway so you can adjust the flow amount to exactly what you want so you can just dial whatever pump you get back a bit which will save you on electricity as well.

 

Screwtape....I am just going to split the 10 gal sump in half...5 gal fuge and 5 gal return. I feel that would be a good compromise. I will add a HOB skimmer later...what do you think?

 

I vote with Screwtape. I'd probabyl do a larger sump with extra liverock in it rather than a fuge. The extra wigle room for top offs is really handy.

 

I do my tops offs directly through my overflow box str8 to the sump/fuge, before when running chaeto alone. It was not enough to keep nitrates down but my phosphates were almost 0, therefore I added the DSB. I agree that for functionality and options, the bigger the better but in my case. I didnt have room and didnt want it sittin outside on the side of my tank so I went with the small 10g w/ DSB, chaeto and couple pieces of rock. I have a decent pod population and my chaeto grows well. I use a 400gph sump at 4ft head and it gives me good slow flow. My mangroves had started sprouting roots there before I moved them to the display (again due to space). I had a couple of large pieces of LR in there as well in the old set up but they just accumulated slime and seemed to be producing nitrates, possibly due to slow flow and since moving them to the DT my nitrates have decreased, along with a few small water changes ofcourse. It is a little bit tricky because of having to watch evaporation and increased water volume from a turned off skimmer, as for the pump, i pull out the outlet from the display to prevent it from backsiphoning if I need to turn it off for any reason. I lose about a 1/2 gallon a day to evap so I just top off manually every night to a point marked on the tank. If you skip the dsb, you will have more room but like screwtape said, chaeto alone is not enough for nutrient export. If your going to do an HOB skimmer then you dont need to split it in half for a return pump. I use the full length and my return pump is in the fuge but elevated and has a foam filter around it so it doesnt pull in sand and macro. My camera is dead, but I will post a picture of my own set up when its charged. If you do have the option and space or dont mind it in view outside of your tank, then definitely go bigger. Increased water volume is always better. If I was you, I would get a decent skimmer instead and then look into settin up the fuge later, that is if you had to chose between the two. What type of filtration do you use?

 

I think there are a couple considerations to make. If you're talking about adding a HOB skimmer onto your display then you're negating some of the bonuses of having a sump, in that you can hide the equipment and keep your display as clean as possible. Not everyone is concerned with keeping a clutter-free tank though.
You could potentially put the HOB skimmer on the sump to solve that problem and still have your refugium and return pump area in the sump, but I don't know if you have that much space. Also in my experience and from what I've read HOB skimmers are not as efficient as good quality in-sump skimmers.
I guess I would be more inclined to wait and get a good skimmer rather than setup a refugium for now, if money is an issue for the skimmer. A lot of the time you won't run into nitrate issues for a few months anyway (if you stock reasonably slow) so maybe you could save up for a better skimmer while that's happening. Fuges take a while to really get going, before your macro algae really start growing efficiently so you would have a delay there too.
If you were trying to do a system with a really large refugium and go skimmerless I would probably say something different but since you're stll considering skimmers I think it would be best to skip the refugium for now, especially for how small it will be in the meantime before you get the skimmer.

Also just to be clear skimmers and fuges perform different functions. Skimmers try and remove stuff before they can break down and become nitrate. Fuges aim to remove nitrate and phosphates to some extent after that whole breakdown process has happened.