A noob's stab at a refugium...

I was taking my son to the lfs to get a fish for our newly set up fowlr tank and said "we can't spend TOOO much on a halloween costume this year" and his response is "but we're gonna go buy a fish?"

I don't know what I said or even if I responded. Needless to say we got a fish. Then I ordered the halloween costume for half price on ebay

 

Nice kids are Great =) my mom ordered costumes from ebay as well. I have 2 boys & 4 girls

 

I have some cheato and calupera and another kind (not sure what it is but my foxface eats it like crazy) in a 75tgal fowlr tank (with one fish, a lemonpeel angel) that I'm waiting to put into the fuge. I was thinking the cheato for one of the areas for sure and not sure which one for the other side. I also have some sun coral which might enjoy it there.

I also considered putting a type of plastic screen over the pvc connection between tanks to keep stuff seperated...

 

Okay after a bit of googling I see that I have two types of calupera.

Can I or should I put them together in the same fuge?

I believe I've read to keep calupera separate from the cheato which would only make sense...

 

My foxface loves the caulerpa so I was wanting to make an area to grow it for him/her, maybe the fuge won't be the place however.

Speaking of sponges, it seems like I see a lot of pics of overflow boxes around with no sponges (or is this prefilter media not considered a sponge?) in them. Is this normal?

I was considering using carbon because I always have tiny particles of "stuff" floating around and I hear that it clears that right up... Maybe I just need to get this thing built and start experimenting?

 

Why cant you mix calupera & chato im getting ready to buy more macro so i shuld ask

 

I was wondering the same thing. Never heard that one before.

 

I just thought I read that somewhere at some point. I could be mistaken however.

So as far as calupera how can you tell if it goes sexual?

I'm still considering growing it in the smaller fuge area as food for my fishies though but if it is such a pain then maybe not such a good idea?

 

So regarding the prefilter in overflow box question, what is the norm around here? Why do I see so many overflow box pics with no prefilter? I'd love to hear that there's no reason to use them