Pictures of my new HOB Refuge

[EJ7B18C1]

Okay, I just got this today and decided I'd share. He can make almost anything you guys want if your interested. Just give me the measurements and a drawn out plan please. Anyways, enough with the suspense here is my new HOB ECO-TYPE Refugium!!

 

 

 

 

 

[Reefer_Buddha]

nice. how much was it?

[tinyreef]

nice looking hob/fuge.

 

but i think those single slots may not be enough to handle the flow. better to have two or more and a safety overflow at the tops (i.e. don't have the panel go right to the top of the outer edges). while it may startup fine, coralline, vermetid snails, crappie, and etc. will eventually start building up until overflow. doubly critical in that setup because you don't have the safety overflows in front or rear sections.

 

since you custom make, have you thought about a PH fed/gravity return fuge? setting the fuge slightly higher but with a spout return, you can feed the unit by a PH in the same overflow box can give you an added level of security (i.e. no siphon breaks in the U-tube).

[ReeferMonkey]

Very nice. Tagging along.

[DLeAnnM]

I know nothing about these things. So the water goes into the overflow box and does the u-tube automatically siphon into the HOB or do you have to start the siphon somehow? How do you return to the tank? Do you put in a powerhead and connect to the black tubing? How do you know which size powerhead to use to keep up with it?

[EJ7B18C1]

Reefer_Buddha: It cost me 100.00 to have it made. Well worth every penny so far. Only thing I would change is what tinyreef suggested about the baffles. Well, if anyone does decide to do it I'll go into detail on that.

 

tinyreef: I have one of those too, anyone wanna buy it? The only problem with those was it really didn't do nothing for the surface of the water. Everyday I would see surface scum that I would try to remove with my net for like an hour. blah!

 

DLeAnnM: You must start the siphon with an airline tube which you shove into the U-Tube on the refugium side. Start sucking on it until you see the water flow through it to the other side, then slowly pull the airline tube out. Voila!

 

As for return you want the PH to match your tanks volume times 10 at least. My tank is 20 gallons so I got a 200+GPH PH to return the water. Now, if for some reason the PH stops working *god forbid* the OverFlow Box is still going to suck in water until the level drops right below the grills. Once its below that the siphon is still there just the water won't go into the refugium anymore cause no water is flowing into the OverFlow Box. If your refugium is big enough like mines then it won't overflow the water out of the refugium onto the floor.

 

Adjusting the OverFlow Box up and down also adjusts how fast the water flows through the HOB Refugium. Kinda like the HOB Filters. (Move the siphon tube on the HOB Filter to the right creates more flow and moving to the left creates less flow or vice versa)

 

Well, I'm off to get some Macro Algae now so I'll keep everyone updated later when things are actually running harmoniously.