Refugium placement?

Ok, im starting to plan the plumbing for my 240g, and im trying to figure out the best placement for the fuge. I will probobly end up with a 110 as the sump/fuge partitioned off as needed. I was thinking of having the two overflows empty in both ends of the 110g, one side would have the skimmer, ca reactor, and the other would be the fuge. the return section would be in the middle.

My dilema is the feed for the fuge. Some people recomend water from the overflow into the fuge, some people say you shouldnt becasue of all the oils etc in the overflow. so they recomend supplying the fuge with water from the skimmer. Anybody's ideas??

 

The way you plan on doing it is very common. You could go to melevsreef.com and read all about sumps and refugium setups.

 

IMO, It is better to have the water go to your skimmer and then to your refugium and back up to your tank! This way any plankton or pods have a better chance of getting into your tank alive.

 

The good thing about this setup is that you can control how much flow goes into the fuge. The refugium runs better at low turnover rates. Also i have read that its better to dump directly into the fuge because gives the inhabitants more things to thrive on, if you do it like this its better that the water crashes on the surface to break up the film that forms on the top.

 

if he does it like this it will be the same things as the protein skimmer>refugium>return because the refugium is dumping directly into the return and not passing thru the skimmer.

 

right IBM, the pump will be in the center, so the fuge will overflow into the pump chamber and straight back to the tank. I had read some on melves also. His own system looks like he feed his fuge from the skimmer, but he also has some sumps set up as i plan to. im still not sure of all pros and cons

 

I prefer main tank water straight into skimmer, and back out to the sump, and main tank water straight into fuge, and back out to the sump.Both units recieving untreated water, and not affecting each other what so ever!!

There many, many diferent ways to do it, its all about preference, and the reasoning you concluded with on why you like it that way.