Refugium and Effects on chemistry?

yesterday I wa reading the boards and saw someone said he doesn't reccomend wet/dry filters for reef tanks cause it can be a "nitrate factory" and would be better to just run a fuge, I've heard similar before, but never really checked into it. I have wet/dry filtration as part of my sump.

I checked my nitrates this morning and saw it went up again. So now I'm thinking of adding a HOB fuge on the back of the tank, Reef Aquarium Filtration: AquaFuge External Hang-On Refugium that one specifically. The large. It's the best one I found on that site with a quick search (i'm at work, also open to any suggestions for anything better and that's HOB)

I've been noticing my corals shrivelled up for a week now and been trying to figure it out, I guess it was the nitrates, I'm not sure why I didn't think of this sooner either. It would be nice to have the extra filtration and space from the refugium, but will it help hold off the nitrates at all?

I'm going to make a routine of changing filter padding once a month at least and try to keep the nitrates down.

 

I would change the filter padding like once a week. A fuge will help with the nitrates but not overnight. My suggestion would be clean the pad change that once a week. Do like a 25% water change now and again in like another week and definetely go with the fuge you may also look into a different method other than the wet dry setup

 

So first..... what is your nitrates reading?

Also.... just how long were you letting your filter pads stay? Even a month is a long time. They are probably bioogical at that point.

I'm not one to say w/d filters are nitrate factories. An improperly maintained one though most definitely is.

A place to grow algea will suck up nitrates, but the goal is to lower them as much as possible before hand.

 

Instead of going with a HOB fuge, is it possible to convert the wet/dry compartment of the sump into a fuge? That's what I would probably try to do, but that's just me.

 

I have a fluval canister filter that's been running as well from day one, it was for fool-proofing in the early days when i was first trying my hand @ sump work, but I kept it on cause... well just cause. Can't hurt

I will do the change of the filter padding once a week if that will help. I buy the big bag of the blue and white coarse padding and cut it to the size of my bioballs box and drop it ontop of a trickle plate i made (sheet of lexan with holes drilled in to help evenly distribute water over the bioballs). I can just cut the squares smaller inot 4x4 blocks and drop it right under the inlet pipe from the tank to the sump.

Do a whole bunch and just swap out weekly.

A few days ago I got a low reading .05. This morning it came up @ 40. I may have gotten a wrong reading. I like the wet/dry, it does help alot with general filtration in my experience. Also since I got it runnign properly my ammonia vanished.

I was thinking of that, and then read a couple times that the flow from the sump in is just too strong/violent for a fuge. Which makes sense from all the ones I've seen in action. I would have liked to avoid the cost and go that way, but I'm probably going to encourage a problem. I do prefer a stronger faster turnover in sump flow.

 

How often do you clean your Bioballs? If not cleaned often they can become nitrate factories as well.

 

I've NEVER done that... Didn't even know you had too

 

I have repeated that question to the LFS that recommended I get a wet/dry for my FOWLR. His response was, you never want to clean them because they hold the beneficial bacteria that helps your tank. He said from time to time you may want to rinse some detritus of but never clean them? When you say clean them do you mean scrub them clean or just rinse some of the junk off them?... Jeff

 

When you do water changes, rinse the bio balls off in the dirty water. You need to keep them clean of detrius build up.

 

From my understanding you just rinse them out, no need to scrub them. Problem is they start to collect a lot of detrius which in turn produces nitrates. A lot of the people I know that use them clean them regularly or they removed them all together.