Picotope sump suggestions

[LarryD]

so I have had my picotope up and running since January and it even made the move with no causalities when I moved back from school. however recently I have been noticing what appear to be diatoms growing on the glass so I decided that it would be nice to build some sort of sump or refugium for the tank as this would give me some more water volume and a place to keep my heater and perhaps some macro.

My question becomes what are some of my options for adding a sump or refugium to an established tank like this. My first thought was to have the canister filter I have been using output into a secondary container that then cascaded back into the dt but I also like the idea of getting rid of the canister completely.

This is my first saltwater tank so I am not real sure what can be done and my searches for the most part only turned up larger tanks so I am struggling there also.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[jestep]

The overflow and return is the biggest problem as far as looks and not taking up a ton of room. As far as the sump itself, virtually anything will work for this size tank. If you can get away with something like a 10 gallon tank with added baffles, it would make a super stable pico. You could run berlin style with a sock or another mechanical filtration method. It's large enough you could easily fit your heater and add a skimmer if you wanted as well.

If you can find one, a mame overflow is probably what I would go with. They look good and are about as low of footprint possible. Run something like a MJ900 for a return pump and you should have more than enough turnover. Use a lily pipe for your return line, also a great looking piece of equipment. ADA and Green leaf aquariums makes them. You can typically find them on ebay as well.

[LarryD]

The overflow and return is the biggest problem as far as looks and not taking up a ton of room. As far as the sump itself, virtually anything will work for this size tank. If you can get away with something like a 10 gallon tank with added baffles, it would make a super stable pico. You could run berlin style with a sock or another mechanical filtration method. It's large enough you could easily fit your heater and add a skimmer if you wanted as well.

If you can find one, a mame overflow is probably what I would go with. They look good and are about as low of footprint possible. Run something like a MJ900 for a return pump and you should have more than enough turnover. Use a lily pipe for your return line, also a great looking piece of equipment. ADA and Green leaf aquariums makes them. You can typically find them on ebay as well.

So one of the problems I am running into is that the tank is sitting on a table that I can't drill through and so I would have to run extra tubing over the side of the table or over the back.

I do have a five, a ten and even a twenty gallon tank sitting below the table like one of the Russian dolls though so they could be utilized.

[LarryD]

So I am thinking I might be better served with something like a hob refugium since I can't really drill a hole to mount anything below the tank easily. The hob refugium gives me that extra water volume with room for heaters and macro. The hob refugium (which in this case will probably just sit on the table behind the tank) also would probably come out significantly cheaper than the mame overflow route which is preferable since I just graduated and do not yet have a job (not for lack of looking).