well i never did get around to testing my repair job last night, i stopped by one of the 2 lfs's that i actually like the people in, and got an education on skimmers, thier prices, and things that i can do to my tank to encourrage corraline algae growth.. that and how to keep the red slime away...
i really just wanted to stop and talk to them about the skimmers and what they had and get a price and figure out the dimentions that i would need to have in the skimmer section of my fuge...
the ones that he has, and that he promices that i will be happy with, will sit in a 6 inch by 7 inch space... but thats a medium sized unit, and no, i dont remember the brand right now...
so, i'm thinking i'll make my skimmer section something like 8-1/2 inches, i figure that should allow plenty of room should i ever decide to go to something bigger than what i looked at last night... he actually showed me 2 of these units in use in the store, in actuall tanks, and they had some shag-nasty brown skum bubbeling up out of them... so looks like they work, and he said thier easy to maintain, and set up and tune in, so.. for 115 bucks i think i'll go that route... after the wife gets her first paycheck at her new job, whenever that's gonna be.
so, my next question is about the sump/fuge design, and what to put in it...
i'm thinking some LR, some sand, some calurpa, maybe a mangrove or 2 down the road(ill have lots of height for it to grow) and a couple crabs and snails..
the way i'm looking at it, it would seem that all i really need is 3 sections, 1 is the input from the tank, and this is where the skimmer should go, and sould also be the deepest water section, then that goes through anti bubble baffels, into the fuge area, and i would think to make this be the largest section, and then lastly the return pump and ATO section. I would also like this to be fairly large, so that the level can fluctuate a little and not cause problems with running a pump dry or anything like that...
sound like a pretty safe design?
the other thing that i was thinking about was how to get the water to flow through the fuge area, and not just along the top, and then out into the return section, so i was actually thinking of instead of using a tripple baffel to stop the bubbles from the skimmer, to use a 4th baffell, thats not all the way at the top, and not all the way to the bottom of the fuge, but just somewhere in the middle, the theory is that when the water goes through the tripple baffels, it would hit this 4th one, and be partially directed down into the fuge, thus making sure that the fuge is getting new water throughout its entire depth, and not just along the top...
ideas thoughts pictures, all welcome...