How Nasty???

Refugium owners...How nasty do you let your fuge get before you clean it? If ever. I let mine get a little nasty, then I would trim the Chaeto, and clean it up a little..not overclean until it was perfect. BUT this time I got lazy, and let it go for months. It started getting a slime, skin that was slowly covering the sand. I'm talking thick skin. The thickness of chicken skin. Well I could not take any more, and cleaned it out. Sand was rock hard, broke it all up. I am letting it settle out before I turn it back on. Scared to send any of this nasty stuff to the main tank. Here are pics.







NASTY HUH????

 

That's what a refugium is for. I have all sorts of slim algaes in my refugium. There's mud, sand rock, better there then in the Dt. I only trim my cheato, that's about it.

 

Ditto. I would trim the macro but let the funk go.

 

I usually do that, but literally that skin was about to cover the sand completely..lotta cyano too.

 

I have never cleaned one myself mine always look like a salt marsh , And I would not recommend anyone to trim the algae if by trimming you shearing it out or off with scissors ? I just I hate to put my hands in mine I use a plastic spaghetti noodle scooper for a better word to simply stick it into the fuge and yank out about 1/2 of whats in there and toss it out .

I have known guys to really cut their grass like they where trimming a hedge row and all that does is allow chlorophylls to get into the water as the snipped ends tend to bleed . And I would also change out my carbon after removing algae to help prevent the water from getting yellow from the plants

 

Cyno is actually good to have in the fuge, it really helps export nutrients, but you do want some water flow through the sand, so if that slim was preventing it, it's probably good you cleaned it out.

 

That's actually a really good idea.

 

Hey Roger!!!! Long Time!!! You were the one that inspired my fuge, and I actually quoted you on occasion about it being a swamp. I just pull some of the Chaeto apart, I dont cut it. I did not like putting my hands in there. I was actually a little terrified that something would bite me!! As you can see in the pic. There is still some pretty good nastiness in there. In fact, after an hour, it still looks the same. Probably will take overnight to settle. I remember you telling me that the sand should not harden...well it was a brick on top. So I broke it all up. I hope this was not a mistake. That is why it is shut down until it settles back out.

 

You will be O.K with the sand what happens is the sand will fuse as all the acids underneath build up in the anaerobic area and the sand starts to melt and it simply will fuse up like concrete as you have all the natural elements and heat that makes concrete . Then the warm water wants to get up to the cooler oxygenated water above it and just a few inches away like a hot mass of stagnate air in the summer time wants to rise to get to the cooler air above then you get a tempature inversion then a storm , This is the weak link with all the DSB gods all three times it was dragged from the old box of mothballs . But in the fuge it will not wipe your tank out. and you can break it up to allow some of the hydrogen sulfide gas and acidic water to get out , I usually take a dowel to rake mine every yr or so but its been two yrs plus now and I've not touched it .. so who know how its doing maybe a brick ? But the only thing that crust does is to stop dissolution of the natural carbonates and calcium in the sand back into the system and will retard the NO3 reduction action also .

 

Thanks ... that was very informative!!! Good to hear from you again!!!