should I add a refugium and how?

I have been debating wether to add a refugium. I have a heavy bio load with my fish so I really have to watch my perameters. I have a oceanic trickle filter plus sump right now and with my live stock I dont want to risk my tank cycling. I assume if I switch out my sump with a combo sump/ref. it will cause my tank to recycle. so what would be the easiest and safest way to do this? just add a seperate ref. and if I do that could it cause my tank to cycle?

 

There are many ways to skin this cat. I sea you already have a 20g long. That's what I have under my 90g. I just divided it up so that I had a 12"x12" section that I could devote as a fuge. A piece of acrylic, a piece of eggcrate and some silicone is all I used. If I were you, I would be tempted to buy another 20 long and work on it. Then switch everything over. You may have to do some plumbing mods but that is easy enough. PVC is very easy to work with. If your 20 is already packed, you can gain some room by using a 30g. It is six inches longer......

And I cannot imagine that it would cause your tank to cycle. If you use sand as the substrate, you may get a small nitrate jump, but the macros in the fuge will catch up with that. What are your numbers right now?

 

Yeah there isn't any room in this sump. barely can fit a protien skimmer in it. So would you just add a ref. or try to work in a combo style, and if adding a ref. could it cycle my main tank?

 

a fuge wont cause a cycle by itself. Now you will want to re-use any bio balls etc that you have in your current setup. then you can slowly remove them if that is your end goal.

 

If you add a ref. does it matter if you pipe it in before or after the sump or would you

 

are you combining it, or making a seperate fge?

 

If I decide to add a seperate ref.

 

probably put a T piece in your line before your sump, and then a small pump to get water back to sump. Put a valve after the T piece before sump, and after the T piece before fuge

 

+1 on the "T" before the sump. However, I would not use a pump in the fuge. Everything needs to be 'gravity down, then pump up'. The two pump method doesn't work that well. Once you get it adjusted, you need to constantly fine tune it to compensate for wear and tear, gunk, etc. You will either be running empty or filling up.....routinely.

You could scoot your 20 off to the side and build a small fuge out of acrylic (or drill a 10g) and put it up on a platform. Drill it about two thirds the way up to allow what water is in there to drain into the sump and let the return pump take it from there.

Water from the aquarium should hit the fuge first (well, part of the decending water column anyway), not sump to fuge. More nutrients to export that way.

 

great thanks at least now I have a direction