20 Gallon Long Build

[CoolGuy77]

I'm going to be building a 20 gallon reef and transferring my 5 gallon inhabitants into it. I'm going to be building an in tank refugium, well technically 2. I'd love any feedback on the design, if there is anything sticking out as something I shouldn't or should do. Right now my 5 gallon tank has a built in refugium and it has worked out very nicely so I'll be tweaking that design for the new tank. I've attached a super detailed drawing of what I'm planning on doing The arrows show the water flow in the tank.

 

I'll try to get more detail up soon, as well as pictures from my old tank to give a better idea of what I mean.

[Weetabix7]

This is interesting, I've never seen it done quite like this before.

 

What made you think of doing 2 separate refugiums like this, and what are you hoping to accomplish by doing it this way?

[CoolGuy77]

It partly has to do with I bought the acrylic and don't have enough for the full back, and also I wanted to have a spot that had the full depth of the tank.

[tnagg]

I'm very interested to see this once its up and running. This seems like a really cool design.

[CoolGuy77]

Here's a little more detail of what I'm planning on doing and I also have a question.

 

My current setup is a 5.5 gallon reef tank as seen in the pictures. I've done the in tank refugium before and it has worked pretty well. I have some issues with my current tank that I want to change for the new one. My biggest issue is that over time the black paint I used has come off in some spots, so the acrylic is more transparent in some places. I didn't use Krylon paint which I heard is pretty good in terms of painting acrylic for reef tanks. I was wondering if anyone has used Krylon with success or should I just buy black acrylic off amazon or maybe somewhere else?

 

 

 

[CoolGuy77]

Finally making some progress on the tank. The acrylic refugiums are in place in the tank and the canopy is all made. I just need to stain the canopy and paint the inside of it white. I'll load some build pictures later, but this is how it currently looks.