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What is a sump/fuge? How does it work?

A sump holds extra water for your system and hides all your equipment and stuff down there. The sump should be Ideally 1?3 or more of your display tank's volume. Somehow you need to get the water from the tank down to the sump, using an overflow, ar drill holes in the tank etc. Then you need a return pump which is rated to however many gallons your overflow can handle.

A refugium is just that, a place of refuge. It can be for fish, or little inverts or whatever. One thing beneficial is that copepods(small inverts), a natural food, will reproduce and grow and feed the main tank where they are usually depleted. You can grow macroalgae in it and have a deep sand bed, DSB, for natural nitrAte removal, NNR, for extra filtration.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Agreed ^^

Sump is basically the best way to filter larger tanks. Power filters just wont cut it, most companies don't make large/powerful enough canister filters, thus sumps are the best way to go for larger tanks.

Saltwater wise, sumps are great because they increase the total water volume, thus allowing for more fish and an overall more stable system.

Sumps are also beneficial that they can hold extra filters and other equipment and keep them out of the tank. This is nice for FW because some fish will attack heaters. However, it hold more benefits for SW as there is more equipment.

Now a refugium can be like a sump. Most of the time they are another system that is connected to the main display. Generally they share the same water between the two, however the 'fuge can be like a whole new tank. Generally, 'fuges are used in SW, but they can also be used in FW. You can do a LOT with a 'fuge. In saltwater system, you can have a deep sand bed as this will eventually lead to nitrate absorption. You can also grow a lot of macro algae to both absorb nitrate but also help with 'pod growth. Sometimes fish can be put in there if they need to be physically separated from the rest of the tank (a physical quarantine). You can also store additional live rock in a fuge. There are many more options, but they generally fall along the same lines as those that I listed.

Refugiums are often confused as being the same thing as sumps because they are very similar, and you can even have a refugium IN a sump. A 'fuge is generally another aquarium, where a sump is generally a large and flexible filtration system.

Sumps are always a good adition to a fish tank (especially saltwater tanks). They are out of site and make a good filter option over a lot of other types of filters. You can even put a power filter in it (2 filters in one) and your heaters protein skimmers and any other equiptment you can fit in it or attatch to it. I would suggest one if your tank has a stand that you can put it in. If you have a tank 40 gallons and under i wouldnt really suggest one unless you really feel you need one.

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pnh

If you have a tank 40 gallons and under i wouldnt really suggest one unless you really feel you need one.

I would disagree here, I think a lot of my success with my 30G reef is because I have a relatively large (30G) Sump. Especially since this is my first tank, the extra water helped me minimize any mistakes I made. Plus, it's hard having a small tank because waste accumulates quickly, thus a sump can actually be better in a small tank than a large one.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Of course the most extreme case is the monster David Saxby aquarium featured in Practical fishkeeping a while back - I reviewed this monster aquarium prior to the Board upgrade, and his main aquarium is around 1,200 gallons. However, he has a 2,000 gallon plus sump attached to it!

Needless to say, the logistics for that system are hilarious. His RO unit has to be run almost continuously for him to make enough water for water changes. However, the enormous sump is split into two equal sized compartments, so he can drain water from one compartment and add the new water while the other half is still functioning as a sump. Even so, his filtration system is industrial scale - there's something like three kilometres of pipework!

If you're mad enough, you could run with having a sump that's larger than the main aquarium if you like the 'crowded' look - this would give you the water volume needed to keep your fishes happy but still allow you to have fairly dense looking stocking, and this is probably the means by which some people manage to keep large shoals of Anthias successfully in aquaria that 'look too small' as it were - although of course the territorial needs of the fishes still have to be taken into account. If you're clever enough with the engineering, you could have the sump in a different room with all the messy equipment easily to hand but out of view of the main aquarium, thus allowing you to create the 'window on the Barrier Reef' look with a bare minimum of intruding equipment (i.e., lighting) while still running all the technology needed to keep the setup going. And, of course, if you wanted to, you could partition the sump as David Saxby has done, but on a smaller and more manageable scale, possibly even partitioning it into three sections, with one of the sections adapted as a refugium for copepod farming etc. The options are basically limited only by [1] your budget, [2] your skill in putting it all together, and [3] thereafter, your imagination.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002