Good critters and stuff for fuge??

[Reefer_Madness]

Starting a new tank and looking for useful ideas for the refugium. I'm thinking low flow fuge. Not sure if I fully believe in the nutrient absorption benefits of macro algae in a fuge, but I'm going to give it a shot. What I do believe in is the benefits of a safe refugium for pods and other good stuff to grow and become coral and fish food.

 

I've never really taken my fuge seriously. It's always been a good place for fish in "time out".

 

My new sump is setup like a Triton sump and I have a recirc skimmer in the 2nd compartment fed by the return.

 

Refugium is about 10g. DT is 120g and I like to keep my nutrients low, but not ultra low. Tank is 99% SPS and has about 80lbs of LR.

 

I'm hoping to get some suggestions on what I should put in the fuge. At this point the only thing I know I am putting in there is water.

[YHSublime]

Macro algae, what kind of light is on it?

 

 

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[sethsolomon]

put a good 1g of chaeto to start and get these 2 lights to light it:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Finnex-Planted-Automated-Aquarium-Controller/dp/B00U0HMWHW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459100995&sr=8-1&keywords=finnex+planted+plus+24+7+20

 

and get a cheap[ shop clam lamp with a warm white 100w equiv bulb.

 

My chaeto doubles every week.   You will need to remember to trim back the chaeto so it has room to grow and to absorb nutrients.   I can bring you a gallon of chaeto when I pick up the sump.

 

 

 

[Cliff Puckstable]

I was always a firm believer in refugiums but my aio solana doesn't have a fuge and its growing sps like crazy. I don't even dose or do water changes on this tank so I don't know anymore. If you have the space I say go for it.

[Reefer_Madness]

I was always a firm believer in refugiums but my aio solana doesn't have a fuge and its growing sps like crazy. I don't even dose or do water changes on this tank so I don't know anymore. If you have the space I say go for it.

Your tank is an anomaly. When I saw it I was shocked. You have a green thumb for sure.

[Reefer_Madness]

Macro algae, what kind of light is on it?

 

 

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No light yet, but that's just a minor detail. Lol. I have a compartment for a fuge, a dedicated valve for flow, and nothing else.

[dave w]

A 10 gallon refugium seems small for a 120 gallon tank.  Is there any way you could get that bigger?  You won't regret it in the long run.

 

I'm a big believer in algae, especially now that LED shop lights are available for such low prices.  I'd recommend that you set up an easy way to harvest it.  Chaeto is the recommended species.

[sethsolomon]

A 10 gallon refugium seems small for a 120 gallon tank. Is there any way you could get that bigger? You won't regret it in the long run.

 

I'm a big believer in algae, especially now that LED shop lights are available for such low prices. I'd recommend that you set up an easy way to harvest it. Chaeto is the recommended species.

I believe he said the refugium chamber. Probably a 40 breeder sump.

 

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[Squishie89]

Maybe consider putting an algae scrubber in the refuge compartment?

[Reefer_Madness]

A 10 gallon refugium seems small for a 120 gallon tank. Is there any way you could get that bigger? You won't regret it in the long run.

 

I'm a big believer in algae, especially now that LED shop lights are available for such low prices. I'd recommend that you set up an easy way to harvest it. Chaeto is the recommended species.

10g is all I have. Maybe someday when I have a fish room or aquacave. No way to increase it.

[Reefer_Madness]

Maybe consider putting an algae scrubber in the refuge compartment?

At one point I thought about it. They stink from what I hear though. That could just be troll talk from the forums I read though.

[Reefer_Madness]

I believe he said the refugium chamber. Probably a 40 breeder sump.

 

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Exactly. It's a 40 breeder sump.

[Reefer_Madness]

I'm not just looking to export nutrients, I actually more interested in growing coral and fish food like pods and such. Does a Chaeto ball grow pods well?

[khh27]

I'm not just looking to export nutrients, I actually more interested in growing coral and fish food like pods and such. Does a Chaeto ball grow pods well?

Mine does. LR and chaeto

 

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[SunWyrm]

Chaeto has never grown much for me and always melts, but my caulerpa serrulata grows a ton (and it's pretty!). I also keep about a dozen mangroves in my fuge, as well as C. prolifera. Home to a ton of life in there; pods, worms, sponges,etc. You can cram a lot in a little space. 

[YHSublime]

At one point I thought about it. They stink from what I hear though. That could just be troll talk from the forums I read though.

You can get them to collect in boxes. They are pricy, but they appear to get the job done. Mike and Terry, down in RVA have one of the nicest tanks I've seen, use one with great success.

 

I'm not just looking to export nutrients, I actually more interested in growing coral and fish food like pods and such. Does a Chaeto ball grow pods well?

It can do both. You should consider exporting nutrients, what goes in should go out!

 

Any cheato will house your pods for sure.

[sethsolomon]

Chaeto has never grown much for me and always melts, but my caulerpa serrulata grows a ton (and it's pretty!). I also keep about a dozen mangroves in my fuge, as well as C. prolifera. Home to a ton of life in there; pods, worms, sponges,etc. You can cram a lot in a little space. 

Caulerpa is great if you have the space for it to grow fast. But once it runs out of space it has a high chance to go sexual and can get up in the main display.   Mangroves are also good but suck up a lot of magnesium.

 

Chaeto normally melts if there is not enough flow through the sump.

[gmerek2]

Since we are on the chaeto debate I'll throw in my two cents. I grew it like crazy when tank was newer and I had nutrients. Upgraded skimmer and tank got older. Now it just melts away starved out IMO. Did research. Tried more flow. Tried 3 different lights. No grow. So I had to switch to Devils breath macro or something like that. Pods grew great in the chaeto but it's a lot of trouble to get them out. IMO They don't live when they get pumped through your pumps. A fuge is a lot of fun and slightly beneficial but not a must IMO

[SunWyrm]

I guess I should caveat with I'm too lazy to set up a dedicated spot for growing Chaeto.  Caulerpa just works better for moi. Though I haven't had any issues yet. 
 

I have kept c. serrulata in the display before; very easy to pull off roots if you're unhappy with where it's going and turns a very pretty teal color. Makes a great piece in a macro tank.
 

Feel like this thread needs a link to this: DIY Chaeto Factory

[Anemone]

Starting a new tank and looking for useful ideas for the refugium. I'm thinking low flow fuge. Not sure if I fully believe in the nutrient absorption benefits of macro algae in a fuge, but I'm going to give it a shot. What I do believe in is the benefits of a safe refugium for pods and other good stuff to grow and become coral and fish food.

 

I've never really taken my fuge seriously. It's always been a good place for fish in "time out".

 

My new sump is setup like a Triton sump and I have a recirc skimmer in the 2nd compartment fed by the return.

 

James Fatheree (who was going to speak at our winter meeting before the snow messed up the date) runs his 125 gallon without a skimmer and has tons of pods and great coral growth. The idea as I understand it is that bacteria that end up in the skimmate aren't available as pod food.

Tank profile: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2014/9/aquarium

 

Another Advanced Aquarist article gives bacterial counts in the water as a result of different setups. Skimming decreases bacterial counts by about 10 times. Interestingly the unskimmed tanks matched counts in actual coral reefs. I think this fits with the notion that skimming restricts pod growth. On the other hand, not skimming lets pods increase in numbers until they reach a balance with the bacteria levels.

Link to study: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2011/3/aafeature

 

(Backed by real examples per your earlier point, though the examples aren't my own.)

Edited March 29, 2016 by Anemone

[dave w]

I'm not trying to contradict you here, and I like your link between bacterial counts and skimmers.  But to express a personal point of view from my copepod study, I see skimmers and bacteria levels as minor influences on your copepod populations, and I see water pumps (including skimmer pumps) as more like 90% of the influence on your pod populations.

 

There are two main types of pods in your tank.  Calanoids are open water swimmers with very long antennae which sense the pressure wave of approaching food or predators.  They are mostly transparent and their long antennae break off when your pump accelerates them.  They don't survive very long in our tanks.  

 

Harpacticoids have shorter antennae and typically come from estuaries and bays.  They drop to the bottom during the day to avoid fish where they eat attached bacteria, especially among the macro algae, and thus are typically darker colored to blend in.  At night they swim up into the water column with two feeding methods.  They actively sweep for micro algae, or they go completely still if they sense an approaching zooplankter and then ambush it with a quick move.  

 

With all due respect to James Fatheree and the smart PhD biologists (I am neither degreed nor very smart), planktonic bacteria are typically so small that they are probably consumed by pods more by accident than by design.  Phytoplankton at 2-50 microns are a hundred times larger than bacteria and full of lipids (vegetable oil).  And a zooplankter at 50-200 microns is usually many times larger than phyto, thus a better meal.  

 

The (long winded) point is that even harpacticoids are damaged by water pumps at night when they enter the open water.  The copepods on your rocks are the 1% survivors that didn't get ripped up by your pumps.  There is nothing in pod evolution that included rapid acceleration.  

 

I'd opine that going skimmerless will help pod populations not because more planktonic bacteria are present but because you remove a water pump.  To really increase your pod population, consider the wave types of intermittent powerheads and run them at low speeds.  By turning on half as often and at lower rpm, they kill fewer pods.  Another great feature is that now some powerheads have a light sensor and automatically drop to low speed at night when the harps move to open water.

 

This may contradict other info that is available to you.  Consider all sources and go with what you feel is best.

[Reefer_Madness]

Dave W - I have no idea what I am doing, so there is no contadictions at all in your post.  Refugiums are such a debated topic.  It is very interesting actually.  At this point I am kinda just trying to figure out if a refugium is only for macro algae or is there a pod benefit.  It seems to be a hotly debated subject.

 

One question for you is this - I have a recirculating skimmer at the moment.  It is fed by my return pump.   So the water from my refugium goes straight to my return pump and back to my tank.  Only a small portion of the water from my return pump manifold will go to feed the skimmer and flow back to the return pump.  In theory, this seems to help a little on the pumps, right? 

[Reefer_Madness]

James Fatheree (who was going to speak at our winter meeting before the snow messed up the date) runs his 125 gallon without a skimmer and has tons of pods and great coral growth. The idea as I understand it is that bacteria that end up in the skimmate aren't available as pod food.

Tank profile: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2014/9/aquarium

 

Another Advanced Aquarist article gives bacterial counts in the water as a result of different setups. Skimming decreases bacterial counts by about 10 times. Interestingly the unskimmed tanks matched counts in actual coral reefs. I think this fits with the notion that skimming restricts pod growth. On the other hand, not skimming lets pods increase in numbers until they reach a balance with the bacteria levels.

Link to study: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2011/3/aafeature

 

(Backed by real examples per your earlier point, though the examples aren't my own.)

Awesome info. Thanks.

[sethsolomon]

One question for you is this - I have a recirculating skimmer at the moment.  It is fed by my return pump.   So the water from my refugium goes straight to my return pump and back to my tank.  Only a small portion of the water from my return pump manifold will go to feed the skimmer and flow back to the return pump.  In theory, this seems to help a little on the pumps, right? 

 

Theoretically you will have a higher chance of pods making it to the display over a tank with an internal cone skimmer since it is only hitting 1 pump and not a chance of hitting 2. 

[YHSublime]

I've never been one for refugiums, but I understand their purpose. The following is all just opinion, mixed with some past experiences.

 

It's input output type situation, and I've always thought about them as a way to export nutrients. I think when we start focusing on growing pods and keeping pods in the tank, it will just naturally happen. I tried to run a refugium area once, and I grew cheato very slowly, but it was packed with pods, I also had a bunch of rubble rock in the corner of my DT, and that was also packed with pods. I don't know if the two related to each other, but I found it more beneficial running home made "pod condos" (rubble rock in gutter guard) that I threw in my sump and rotated in between the display and the sump.

 

I believe that if you're doing a refigium to up your pod count, it's the wrong reason. I think your pod count will go up as your tank matures, regardless of arrangements you make.

 

Speaking to that, when I quarantined all the fish in my 150 for 9 weeks, my pod population exploded in the tank. Something to consider is letting your tank mature for as long as possible before adding fish. I had the benefit of having an established tank that I then ran fish less, but still had to feed lightly to keep the bio load up.