Anyone have powerheads in their sump/refugiums?

[Anonymous]

Just curious about this...I'm prolly grabbing that Mag 9 tomorrow, and will open up the overflow as high as it can go, but I'm not sure this will be enough circulation in my 3-foot sump.

Anyone think adding a powerhead will help?

Thanks in advance for the input.

Peace,

Chip

 

[Anonymous]

I have a powerhead in my 'fuge just because when the caulerpa growth gets crazy, it can create stagnant areas without a powerhead.

It's just a little powerhead, but it does the job.

 

[Ben1]

I think that a sump power head would be useful to prevent the build up of detritus. Other reefers put a sand bed in the sump. Others syphon all the detritus out when they do water changes. All those methods should work fine. So if your using a power head for that purpose it should help.

I would never put one in a refugium. For one the original ideas behind refugiums was to has a very slow flow area, free of predators where natural fish foods could breed and flow back into the tank. On top of that it was shown that 90% of artemia cyst were killed by centrifugal pumps. So adding a power head into a refugium would kill it two ways.
HTH

 

[aquarist=broke]

marillion,

I would recommend a small pump in the sump if you had some kind of battery backup. When the power at my house goes out, the battery backup kicks in and runs two aquaclear 201 powerheads, one in the main and one in the sump for about two hours or more. I don't know how your aquatic friends will handle not getting any circulation/surface agitation for extended periods of time.