In the equipment room (i.e. my laundry room) I have a 75 gallon refugium. The refugium is filthy. The thing is, a big, dirty refugium makes the dinoflagellates go away. All anecdotal but it’s worked for me every time. This is negatively lit using a couple old Mars LED lights. The red grow ones would be better but I had these lying around.
My sump needs work
The original sump was a series of 5 50-gallon totes connected by PVC pipes. I found they leaked while I was doing the leak test. So I just bought a 135 gallon tank and partitioned it up. Just for a bit of history, the sump was originally under the tank so I have some limitations. If the sump was in the equipment room I would have made different choices. Anyway, the sump has 4 chambers.
Chamber 1: the tank drains into the sump via a beananimal overflow. I’m not using any filter socks because I’m extremely lazy. Instead I just siphon out detritus when it accumulates. There are 2 500W Finnex heaters in here.
Chamber 2: the next chamber houses 2 marine pure bricks. I don’t think I have enough rock in the tank for good filtration so these are supplemental. There are 2 500W Finnex heaters in here. A total of 2000W. I also have the Apex probes in here since the water level stays constant and the bubbles are minimal. As a side note, I put a sponge on the salinity probe and my readings are so much more consistent.
Chamber 3: this is the skimmer chamber. I’m using a Nyos 300 skimmer. This is another case where having the sump originally under the stand determined this skimmer choice. It’s a good skimmer but I would have picked a bigger skimmer if I knew I’d have more room.
Chamber 4: this is the return chamber. I’m using 2 Jecod 12000 pumps. They are really decent. We’ll we if they last. Also in there is a Simplicity pump (not shown) that acts as my manifold pump. This is a similar pump to the Jecods so if a return fails, I can swap in this one. The Apex ATO is in this chamber.
