Fitting a HOB fuge

[atoll]

I have been working away on and off converting a HOB fuge to fit my tank and yet to still retain the hood. However this is a slow flow fuge with a slow turnover of tank water to try and cultivate both lots of pods and Cheato.

 

 

 

Here's how I did it.

 

 

 

First I cut off the inlet and outlet pipes on the fuge. I then added a John Guest 1/4" bulkhead fitting to one end as a tank water supply.

 

 

I then heated and bent some 1/4" hard pipe and glued it into the inside of the bulkhead fitting. I blanked off the original feed pipe with a sucker I had just as a precaution but this should only be needed if the overflow became blocked.

 

 

 

next thing to do was to make a blank to cover where I had cut off the return pipe, dill it and add a connector with one of those flexible knuckle joint type pipes. While cutting the overflow off very fine cracks appeared in the acrylic but they are water tight. I did however cover the worst cracks with some silicone type glue just in case.

 

 

 

A strainer off a small powerhead intake was then pushed onto the inside of the connector to help prevent blockages of Cheato etc.

 

 

 

To supply the fuge I cut into the 12mm supply pipe to my TMC V2 reactor and fitted a 12mm to 1/4" tee. Some supple RO (but it may in fact be CO2 tubing) was attached to the 1/4" Tee and a small John Guest tap was fitted to adjust the flow to the fuge. A short length of the 1/4" of the pipe was then pushed into the tap and the other end pushed into the new fuge bulkhead fitting.

 

 

My fuge light is a 11watt power compact I bought with the fuge. I fitted this as per my pic below clamped onto a strengthening bar.

 

 

In order to fit the hood I had to cut 2 slots in the hoods rim to take the fuge's hangers and a hole to take the return pipe to the tank.

 

 

I added approx 1" of fine coral sand to the bottom of the fuge and filled it with salt water. I also added a small amount of fine sand from the floor of my tank to help seed it.

 

All ready, I turned on the tap supplying the fuge and held my breath. Water flowed into the fuge from my tank and overflowed back into the tank without any problem or leaks.

 

Here's a pic of it sitting on my tank just waiting for the Cheato which I will hopefully get tomorrow.

 

 

Just perhaps some fine tweaking of the flow into the fuge maybe needed as it is currently more than I was expecting from a 1/4" pipe even so the overflow handles it well.

I will let you know how it fares and update on progress (or lack of it) as and when.

 

__________________

[atoll]

I have completed my slow flow fuge and its set up with 2 handfuls of Cheato. Currently lit by a 11wt power compact. There is approx 1" of fine sand in the bottom and I have added a few bits of dead coral skeleton for pod cover. I will monitor its progress over the coming weeks and report on how successful or otherwise it is although I am confident it will soon have plenty of pods in it. Here's a few pic's.

 

[bizzarro]

Just curious, why would your acrylic crack? What type of hole saw did you use?

[atoll]

Just curious, why would your acrylic crack? What type of hole saw did you use?

 

Just used a fine tooth full sized hacksaw. I have seen this kind of thing happen before but even though its cracks no leaks appear.

[atoll]

Well it didn't take very long for Amphipods to arrive in my HOB fuge, saw my first one today. Now I just want it to be become a refuge for them to breed in numbers along with copepods etc. I will feed the fuge mainly with Cycop-eeze, flake and other bits of marine fare.