Refugium discussion

Good question about the pep shrimp. I would like to know this as well.

Bump

 

This thread is almost a year old, but I feel it has been left open. I'm just starting my own Fuge, and I got a lot of interesting ideas here, but what should I be keeping in my fuge? I have a very grouchy Emerald crab that I don't want in my DT any more, and was thinking about tossing him down there. What types of Macro are good in a Fuge?

 

anything commonly available but mangroves(they get huge and have roots that can split seams).

it may eat some macros like ulva.


see the first answer.

 

I like this thread, if anybody wanted to start a fuge, this is a good place to start.

 

Wow – I forgot about this. I started this thread nearly 2 years ago to get one of those fantastically informative 3Reef threads underway. Looks like we did a decent job of it too.

Emerald crabs are always grouchy in my opinion ;-) he may fair well in the refugium. The thing is that once your refugium is underway you can’t really see inside to see what’s going on. Many people clean the fuge and are always poking around in there – from my experience this is something you want to avoid. As for Macro’s I suggest starting with Cheato and Caulerpa – what you will find is over time your refugium will seed itself with bubble algae maybe even cyano bacteria (mine has both and some algae that I don’t know what it is). After years of maintaining my system the refugium is it’s own little world that I don’t pester.

Roger many years back told me his method was 10/10, 10% of the DT for the reugium size and 10% of the refugium per hour turn over. I have been on this design for probably 7-8 years now – love it.

But that’s me (and tangster/Roger) what is everyone else’s experiences – go back to the first post and respond to those questions. I would really be interested in hearing some of the successful refugium’s that are high speed design’s. The cheato not going asexual approach – I can’t recall if this benefit was discussed in this thread yet. I’ll go back and read it all today. But this is the type of information we should be sharing as people find this thread and begin research for setting up a refugium. God I love 3Reef !

 

My huge set up is a bit complex so I wont delve into it now.mainly bc im on my phone.but the basics are 2/3 of a 120g.I have an 8 inch sand bed.several macros supplied by reefcleaners.I do keep about 10 nas. Snails in there to get the bigger bits of meat that end up down there(im a big over feeder).the other 3rd of the tank is used for my skimmer compartment and return compartment. I did also make a shrimp corral in the return section of the tank,in whichh I keep about 25 grass shrimp.

 

Because I've bid so many maintenance contracts, I've seen more than my fair share of filtration systems that people (including competing LFS's) have built. This was mentioned in this thread previously but IMO bears repeating. If you are wanting to save money on flow (less powerheads, no closed-loop) so you have a very large return pump, don't run the flow through your refugium so fast. You won't grow your micro-fauna very well in this kind of flow and you are not giving your macroalgae the proper contact time to be effective.

I'll give you an actual example. The aquarium was in a financial planner's office. No matter what they would do, the prior maintenance company couldn't get their nitrates below 80. It would climb back to 100 in 2 weeks and then they would do a water change and get it back to 80. Well, they had a Mag18 (maybe a Mag24) on a 125 with dual overflows. They were also convinced their skimmer was a piece of trash. I assured them that an ASM G3 was excellent for a 125 so I would clean the pump and maintain it and that should help.

When I got out there to actually physically look at the tank I determined they had WAAAAAY too much flow through the sump. I put some pellets near the overflow and then watched them go through the sump. WHOOOOOSH!!! Right past the protein skimmer, right through the overflow, right through the return chamber and then right back out the loc-line into the display tank. I told them for a couple hundred bucks, I could fix their aquarium problems. Their maintenance guy was a family friend so they didn't want to fire him....it was just that he couldn't help them no matter what he tried and how much they paid him.

I went to Home Depot and got a couple of PVC T's and 3 ball valves. (I already had plenty of PVC pipe). Now instead of all of the flow going to the input chamber, I had a bypass going straight to the return chamber and an input to the skimmer compartment and an input to the refugium. With the ball valves I could "tweak" the flow until I was happy for each of the 4 chambers. They didn't want the tank cluttered with a bunch of powerheads but I did hide one behind their rock work near the bottom to get the waste sent to the overflows. They called me a couple of days later and wanted to know what the heck I did to their skimmer. I said, "Nothing. I cleaned the impeller and that's it". They said, "You ought to see how full and nasty the collection cup is". I wasn't shocked by this. The water had previously been zipping through the skimmer chamber. I knew this was a one-time maintenance because their guy was a family friend so I was shocked when I got a call a month later and they exclaimed that their nitrates were only 60. I said that was because I added sand to their refugium and slowed the flow down in their refugium too. A couple of weeks later, I got another phone call. Without a waterchange, their nitrates had gone down again. In spite of their guy being a family friend, I got the maintenance account. (My partners managed to screw this up but that's neither here nor there at this point).

 

^^^ and while that may be true, I have never read of any mechanisim that would cause that. What you are really talking about is flow too high for macro algae to "grab" it, or that it's kenetic energy is so high it overcomes bond energy to attract compounds.

There is data showing what proper flow rates are for corals... too low of flow and they can't respirate properly, and too high of flow and they physically can't grab food particles. Yet there are plenty of other cases that micro and macro algae do indeed like high flow. Turf scrubbers and GHA prefer high flow areas. There is a group of people that firmly believe cheato needs to tumble and have had great sucsess and turn arounds increasing flow.

Not at all saying your results did not happen, I would just like to know why. To me, when we test nirtrates, that is a homogenous reading of what is mixed in the water. So those nutrients are available everywhere. Algae should have no problem getting them.

What I could understand is that low flow fuges act as a settling chamber. That more waste accumulates there. While a DSB can process nitrates deeper in, that more nitrates are produced locally in the fuge and on top of the DSB and there is a higher concentration locally for the macro algae to feed on. GHA may prefer higher flows only because it traps more waste that is broke down by bacteria into nitrates and internal to the hair mat flows are reduced and the GHA feeds on a higher concentration of nitrates locally. I really don't know, and I don't have the back ground to figure it out.

This theory might also explain Tangsters long held beleifs that you can indeed have too big of a refugium. That a smaller fuge can act as that settling chamber, and overall provide higher local concentrations of N and P. And that when we provide ideal lighting, that not only is it a better place for algae to grow, that indeed it grows more and we can harvest more because we can provide a higher local concentration of nutrients.

I was never interested in how much algae I could grow, I knew I grew very little, but that I also fed plenty, and I had very low N and P and I had zero algae in my display tank. That is really the goal we are after. But if other tanks need to prvide more optimal condition for their fuge to be more efficient than mine to get to the same place I could understand that.

Bottom line though is there is a mechanisim that is not truely understood. That indeed reefers have had success lowering flow, and by increasing flow. I would like to know which it is. And really what we are talking about is ideal conditions and requirements for growing macro algae as a means of harvesting for nutrient export.

I have no problems at all with providing a "refugium" with reduced flow to provide ideal conditions for pod growth so a proper population can be maintained without immediately being swept away to be ate in the tank.

 

Can a large refugium be such a good nutrient exporter that you could possibly stop running the skimmer? I have heard that some reefers don't even use skimmers, that they export the essential "foods" that reefs need to eat off of.

 

In my opinion no. In my experience it was only after I installed Ozone in addition to my refugium that my skimmer (eventually) stopped producing. At this point I run my skimmer because it’s the means by which I inject my ozone but the collection cup remains dry.