wet dry to refugium advice

i have been doing a ton of research and am still confused about what is the best option for this conversion.

obviously i can see removing the bio balls. i heard its a good idea to stack live rock in that area. my questions are:

should i use the filter media above the live rock?
should live rock be put there or in the main center chamber?
i would like to get some beneficial life growing to somewhat feed my display tank. wouldnt having to pass through the protein skimmer, the bubble diffuser, and the return pump prevent this from happening?

any step by step advice would be appreciated.

 

I'm having the same sort of dilemma. I was considering putting the refugium on that side since the skimmer won't fit there. I have seen conflicting things about where to skim, some say that if you skim after the refug then you may skim out some of your various plankton, etc. some say that it makes no difference, not only will you not skim them out but only a small part of the water there is getting skimmed before going to the return pump.

I was going to remove the bioballs and filter media, not sure if this is the best idea though, however I rarely see these things included in refugiums.

I'm actually considering now just getting a 20gal tank and just using that and not fighting with the design of the wet/dry sump...

 

is your skimmer in the sump area of the wet dry?
also it would help if we had a current diagram of your set up.
yes i think the bubble diffuser pad would catch alot of the pods. and a skimmer probably isn't fun to go through. but a return pump will kill some but alot will live. i think the bubble pad is what really has to go for this to work

 

here is a diagram