New Refugium

No prob! Glad to help!

 

franchise,
Just a couple other considerations to add to the good advice you've already been getting:

1) Size - Is this planned for under the tank? If so, consider the overflow capacity you will have in that 10G fuge (just in case of a power outage)...once you add baffles you'll be left with much less fuge volume too. Also, not sure if you want a DSB or not, but if so, that will reduce the volume you have for the water in the fuge further. Don't forget all of your evaporation is coming out of the return pump section, so you don't want to limit that space too much either. I would look into larger reservoir options, if possible, like khowst had suggested. Again, I'm assuming this is intended for under the tank.

2) Sand Type- there are many discussions on refugium muds on the market...there are probably about 5 that are readily available. If you want the anaerobic bacteria to develop like it does in a DSB, but don't want to sacrifice the volume to get the anaerobic spaces within a DSB, then you can consider a refugium mud because generally it is finer than aragonite and creates those anaerobic spaces in much less volume...most say 1-2". There are other mud considerations too (tons of opinions)...but I'm just talking about volume and anaerobic spaces.

3) Macro- Chaeto is great...I find that if you have a small pump that gets the ball of Chaeto tumbling, the growth is better over time since more of the plant gets exposed to more light. Generally, a slow speed is good as mentioned before. Also, consider gracilaria...it's not a particularly fast grower, so not as good at nutrient export as Chaeto, but my tangs can't get enough of it. Looks pretty neat too.

Good luck and have fun with it.

A nice resource on refugia can be found within Reef Invertebrates by Fenner and Calfo. The section is about 10-15 pages long (if I remember correctly) and goes over several types of set ups and other variables to consider too. Good book otherwise, too.

 

Thanks, Good Read