Refugium questions

[reefguy27]

I am planning on setting up a refugium but before I do I wanted to get some input from those of you that are currently running refugiums.

First of all I am curious as to how people have setup their refugiums including tank size necessary heating lighting and flow and how they plumbed them.

Second I was wondering what mistakes people have made in the past with their refugiums, so I hopefully don't make the same mistakes.

All suggestions are appreciated.

-Jared

 

[Mini4x]

From my minimal knowledge..

bigger IS better..

I made my compartments a tad too small, hard to fit everything in..

My biggest mistake, still not being DONE!

 

[RichConley]

My biggest advice?

Keep the fuge clean. Its there to add pods and to take care of that last bit of nutrients your skimmer can't handle. Its not the public dump.

A really dirty fuge is probably worse than not having one at all.

 

[reefguy27]

bump

 

[jebar777]

im taggi9n along with this one, i am also looking to set up a fuge>

 

[zear0]

there's lots of good info here:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=462212

 

[merk1_99]

I'm curious of why you would say a dirty fuge is bad. What do you consider dirty, algae? As long as the nutrients stay in the sump through algae growth and what not and are mass exported whats the problem. That is what it is there to do soak up your nutrients so you can remove them in a convienant manner. I guess my sump is dirty, and thats why I have virtually no green algae growth in my main tank, and my trates are zero....

 

[Kiah]

I have a 40 gal set up with a 125 gal main tank. The Fuge is as much a display tank as is the 125.
Flow is 400-500 GPH. There is a pump, prior to the skimmer, that routes flow to the skimmer. The fuge discharges back to the sump, after the skimmer for return to the main tank.

The tank is shallow (a 40 breeder) and lit with a home depot floodlight 14 hours per day. I also have a small (12") fluorescent that stays on 24 hours because I use cailerpa in the sump.

The fuge has a deep sand bed 5" that was seeded with sand from my established 75gal and some GARF grunge. There is probably 20 lbs of live rock. The fuge is inhabited by many snails, serpent stars, urchin, peppermint shrimp, bristle worms (2 that are > 12 inches long) and a lot of other creepy crawlies. I use chaeto, many types of caulerpa and some other macro's I not sure of the names and xenia. And against all rules - 2 clowns. So I feed the fuge as well.

I recently threw in an anemone that had split and he's doing fine. The clowns are hosting there.

The water is crystal clear. There is no micro algae formation within the fuge.
There are nusiance anemones but they do not migrate to the main tank. There is a phenomenal variety of life. There are baby peppermint shrimp along with the pods and other animals crawling along the bottom and among the algae. This fuge has been running for about 1 1/2 years.

 

[RichConley]

I'm curious of why you would say a dirty fuge is bad. What do you consider dirty, algae? As long as the nutrients stay in the sump through algae growth and what not and are mass exported whats the problem. That is what it is there to do soak up your nutrients so you can remove them in a convienant manner. I guess my sump is dirty, and thats why I have virtually no green algae growth in my main tank, and my trates are zero....

If you've got stuff rotting in your fuge, its not staying in your fuge. Once it becomes soluble, its everywhere. Nitrate is not really the issue, it will stay low enough to not bother anything. Phosphate is the issue. Its just easier to clean up while its still detritus than it is to clean up once it has become microalgae.

Think of the fuge as a last line of defence. It will get rid of what the skimmer doesnt, but that doesnt mean you dont want ot facilitate the removal of as much as possible with the skimmer.

Keep your fuge clean for the same reason that you dont overfeed. Food sitting around rotting is not a good thing.

 

[merk1_99]

I don't think it is rotting. I remove some algae when it looks like it needs to be trimmed. I have a few naassarius, and astrea snails in the refugioum as well as a few blue legs. My nitrates stay low also because I only feed every 2-3 days. I do add nori every day for the tang...

 

[RichConley]

Naw, Merk, algae is not a problem. Its the detritus rotting in the fuge you need to worry about. The nutrients in algae are banked in their tissue. Its the rotting food/poop/etc that settles out in the fuge and collects that you need to clean out occasionally.

I'm not saying it needs to sparkle, but its good practice to avoid letting it become a cesspool.

 

[joefitz]

Well, I have pretty much all of my tank currently residing in what will become my grow-out tank and my refugium (two 150g rubbermaid trough tanks). The big mistake I made was in putting much of my old refugium's contents into one tank with my SPS and then not keeping it pruned...the grape caluerpa went out of control and basically covered the entire thing.

Luckily, I was finally able to get rid of most of it. I literally had a 20lb bag of the stuff (along with some Xenia that had started growing on it).

So, I would agree that you should keep it relatively "clean" in the sense of pruned and, if possible free of most detritous.

I plan on lighting it with a basic actinic setup although anything would be fine...I just happen to have an extra one laying around. Most of my heaters will probably be located in the sumps but probably not all as I want to make sure the main tank doesn't freeze if circulation to the sump is cut off somehow.

As far as plumbing goes, my plan is to have my main tank (340g) drain from the floor above it into two tanks: a dual-surge device and my grow-out tank. The surge will be the primary flow for the refugium and grow out tank (why waste power trying to create flow when mother nature can do it for you...and more naturally to boot?). I don't think you want high turbulence in the refugium but I also think you need to be getting enough water through it to make it worthwhile too.

I'm not sure what sizing requirements are but I believe the bigger the better. Plant life -- at least when kept pretty separate from corals -- seems to help things.

 

[gettes]

There is a great section in Calfo and Fenner's Reef Invertebrate on fuges. You could probably get a lot of it from the RC threads too but I like to have something to in hand sometimes. It's also has a ton of other useful info though I'm only just finishing the sponge section. Thanks to Marc from Fishy Business for the recommendation of the book when I went down.