Plumbing A Fuge From DT Drain

[Rob77]

I have a synergy reef overflow ..... I plan on adding a remote fuge, more like 10 gallon cheato reactor.....my?????? what drain line should I tee off to run off into the fuge ???? my thoughts were the secondary ....but I planned on using a gate valve to control the flow... I started thinking is this going to cause a problem fine tuning my overflow???? would it be better to use the full syphon drain? ....I cant get my head around this ...... any idea's??? thanks ...... also you can look at my build thread to see my drain lines .......plan on adding 10 gallon brute raised just a bit higher and to the left of the sump with the fuge returning to the skimmer section

 

[Salty1962]

I don't see why you should be able to use it. Just feed the fug back into the return pump section to keep your levels even. Do you have enough going through the secondary to have the flow you want for your fug? Also know the secondary is there for a reason, Safety Backup, if you remove it you've created another point of failure. Have you thought about a pump to feed your fug? Just my thoughts, let us know how it turns out. Very nice setup!

 

[Rob77]

I have a synergy reef overflow ..... I plan on adding a remote fuge, more like 10 gallon cheato reactor.....my?????? what drain line should I tee off to run off into the fuge ???? my thoughts were the secondary ....but I planned on using a gate valve to control the flow... I started thinking is this going to cause a problem fine tuning my overflow???? would it be better to use the full syphon drain? ....I cant get my head around this ...... any idea's??? thanks ...... also you can look at my build thread to see my drain lines .......plan on adding 10 gallon brute raised just a bit higher and to the left of the sump with the fuge returning to the skimmer section

 

[Rob77]

I don't see why you should be able to use it. Just feed the fug back into the return pump section to keep your levels even. Do you have enough going through the secondary to have the flow you want for your fug? Also know the secondary is there for a reason, Safety Backup, if you remove it you've created another point of failure. Just my thoughts, let us know how it turns out. Very nice setup!

I still have an emergency drain also ..............you know I really dont know if I have enough flow going through there after the full siphon catches up haha told ya I cant get my head around this ........thanks for your thoughts though!

 

[Salty1962]

I still have an emergency drain also ..............you know I really dont know if I have enough flow going through there after the full siphon catches up haha told ya I cant get my head around this ........thanks for your thoughts though!

Let me know if I can confuse you more

 

[Rob77]

Let me know if I can confuse you more

haha great! Thanks

 

[Rob77]

anymore thoughts on this ????? anybody???? somebody???? HELP!!!!!

 

[Rob77]

maybe @mixer911 knows the answer to this ...... ?

 

[Rob77]

come on someone knows the answer to this !

 

[Rob77]

ok @Salty1962 I cant get anymore help wih this so far ...............you think I should plumb the thing into the full siphon drain ? ahhhhhhhhh im gonna have to call a plumber on this !

 

[Daniel Waters]

I have a synergy reef overflow ..... I plan on adding a remote fuge, more like 10 gallon cheato reactor.....my?????? what drain line should I tee off to run off into the fuge ???? my thoughts were the secondary ....but I planned on using a gate valve to control the flow... I started thinking is this going to cause a problem fine tuning my overflow???? would it be better to use the full syphon drain? ....I cant get my head around this ...... any idea's??? thanks ...... also you can look at my build thread to see my drain lines .......plan on adding 10 gallon brute raised just a bit higher and to the left of the sump with the fuge returning to the skimmer section

If you have 3 lines, you could use one to drain to the fuge, assuming you are comfortable with having just the one emergency drain line. I would definitely put a valve on it to control the flow into the fuge. The reason for this is you do not want your flow into the fuge to be greater than the fuge gravity drain out back to your sump = overflow / flooding! You mentioned having your fuge slightly elevated above your sump. How high is "slightly elevated"? I can tell you from personal experience of having mine not high enough that it would not drain properly to my sump and I wound up with minor water spillage. Chaeto growth breaking off and algae can restrict your drain on the fuge depending on how you have it set up (like having a nozzle), so you want some margin of safety.

If I were doing it, if run a small pump from the sump up to the fuge versus using one of my main drain lines from my tank overflow.

Hope that helps

 

[dbl]

Not sure what you're return pump is, but maybe that can be T'd off (think manifold) and feed the fuge off the return instead of the drain. Put a valve on the return section going to the fuge to control the flow. Just an alternative suggestion.

 

[Rob77]

If you have 3 lines, you could use one to drain to the fuge, assuming you are comfortable with having just the one emergency drain line. I would definitely put a valve on it to control the flow into the fuge. The reason for this is you do not want your flow into the fuge to be greater than the fuge gravity drain out back to your sump = overflow / flooding! You mentioned having your fuge slightly elevated above your sump. How high is "slightly elevated"? I can tell you from personal experience of having mine not high enough that it would not drain properly to my sump and I wound up with minor water spillage. Chaeto growth breaking off and algae can restrict your drain on the fuge depending on how you have it set up (like having a nozzle), so you want some margin of safety.

If I were doing it, if run a small pump from the sump up to the fuge versus using one of my main drain lines from my tank overflow.

Hope that helps

my plan is to have two drains from the fuge to the sump......one of those being an emergency I know not 100% ''fail safe'' but alot safer anyway .......the reason I was wanting it from the drain was In thinking ...just in thinking was that any junk would just go there first and settle so maybe cheato would get the first shot at it and plans are for this thing to be very very easy to remove and clean as needed anyway ..if this really works IDK was just my thoughts ... what my biggest concern was Is this thing going to be a nightmare to tune ? I really feel the full siphon should be used as Im not sure how much flow I would get from the secondary drain when the full siphon catches up ....im really thinking not enough ...... ok ok ok you guys got me scared now! hahaha thanks and please give me your thoughts .......oh and the overflow is set up bean animal

 

[Rob77]

Not sure what you're return pump is, but maybe that can be T'd off (think manifold) and feed the fuge off the return instead of the drain. Put a valve on the return section going to the fuge to control the flow. Just an alternative suggestion.

read this other reply I posted please ....Thoughts pls.... sorry to bother you guys so much with this but thank you very much!

 

[dbl]

If using the main drain, T off the drain, put a ball valve on the T going to your fuge to control (read slow down) the flow, and the other side of the T to the drain section of sump. It's how I feed my fuge for what that's worth. I do have a valve on the drain side of the T as well for fine tuning if needed. Runs perfectly silent. I would not use the emergency (non fill siphon) line to feed it. My $.02 anyway.

 

[Rob77]

If using the main drain, T off the drain, put a ball valve on the T going to your fuge to control (read slow down) the flow, and the other side of the T to the drain section of sump. It's how I feed my fuge for what that's worth. I do have a valve on the drain side of the T as well for fine tuning if needed. Runs perfectly silent. I would not use the emergency (non fill siphon) line to feed it. My $.02 anyway.

thank you so much with this !

 

[dbl]

thank you so much with this !

Rob...I corrected my comment above. It should have said I would not use the emergency line to feed the fuge. Use the full siphon line T'd off as described. Didn't want there to be any confusion.

 

[Rob77]

Rob...I corrected my comment above. It should have said I would not use the emergency line to feed the fuge. Use the full siphon line T'd off as described. Didn't want there to be any confusion.

gotcha ! I was really really hoping you would come back with that ! thanks

 

[Fin]

If you drain directly from the display to the refugium, you are going to have a messier refugium (more detritus build up). It would be better if you pumped "clean" water from your return pump, or install a small dedicated pump to run the remote refugium. That is what I am planning to do on my build.

 

[dbl]

If you drain directly from the display to the refugium, you are going to have a messier refugium (more detritus build up). It would be better if you pumped "clean" water from your return pump, or install a small dedicated pump to run the remote refugium. That is what I am planning to do on my build.

Correct and good point. I actually keep a small CUC crew in my fuge to help with this very topic.