Refugium help?

Hey everyone, been doing some browsing as I may be being put in charge of a 150 tall saltwater tank at my college. I've never done saltwater before so I wanted to check a few things.
The tank has 2 small fish, but tons of crystalline algae(I think, newbie to salt). I was thinking of using the 30 gallon sump the tank has to stick some macro algae in the tank and possibly mangroves. I'm a huge freshwater fan, and have riparium plants on all my tanks as added filtration, because plants like pothos/peace lilly are far better nutrient exporters than any aquatic plant I've tried out so far. Anyone know if mangroves will be far superior to chaeto for plant filtration? I've never tried mangroves but would love to get the best plants in there to help combat the algae and balance out the nutrients.

The sump we're using is pretty small for the tank. The biomedia compartment takes 50% of the space I get, and there is a skimmer in the empty section. The water is typically pretty shallow(good 5 inches though). I was thinking of throwing some chaeto in the sump, and putting some cfl's on top of it that had the correct spectrum for plants(6500 or above I beleive). Does this sound like it will work? There's a decent amount of flow, but nothing crazy, I keep reading mixed reviews on what you're supposed to have flow wise for chaeto any clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Last question, I know plants can do a fantastic job filtering out a tank in freshwater, am I overestimating an algae based refugium in combating the crystalline algae? There's a really small bio load, but I'm afraid the tank has not been taken care of properly, so I'm hoping by making some small changes, and getting those waterchanges in I can get it looking alright.

 

If you mean coraline algae, a refugium won't help stop it. Also, if you're thinking about putting the macro in the compartment with the skimmer and return pump, it will get sucked into the pumps. Mangroves and chaeto make a really good combination.

 

What do you think about getting a plastic box of some form with holes drilled in it to allow the water to reach the mangroves/algae, but not allow the algae to get in the pumps?

 

You will need at least 1 mangrove per gallon of water to have a real effective exporter.

 

I'm assuming you mean 1 mangrove per system volume and not for the size of the refugium right?