Shaun - Are you at risk of increasing your maintenance on the tank? We've spoken about this before, but what is the risk of 'something' going wrong with the Kelp, with the resultant die off causing problems in the tank? You question the dependence on NOPOX and Rhowaphos, but are you at risk of just shifting that same dependence onto something else?I called in at the LFS today to pick up a 5kg bucket of Rhowaphos and whilst there I was chatting about algae reactors, and I had been looking at the ALR series for a while now.
I didn’t get one because it’s just something else to clean and maintain and apart from the obvious it’s no different to changing the rhowaphos but looks much more fiddly and I’ve read they can be a real pain to keep clean.
Anyway, an easy solution we decided, was a plastic container filled with Miracle Mud, and LED light which the LFS use and a clump of Kelp. I don’t now if the Miracle Mud was necessary but it adds things back to the system so....
The LED light is waterproof in case you see it stuck into the water at the bottom!
So this is my adventure into a refugium with a view to lowering nutrient levels, with a possible view to eventually not using, or reducing the dependence on Nopox and rhowaphos, if indeed this is possible.
I’m certainly not trying to strip the water clean, and will monitor this, but it’s just something I wanted to try.
I’ve put the LED in a reverse overnight cycle so on at 9pm and off at 11am and I’ll see what happens.
Can anyone ID the type of Kelp this is ??
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I'm not criticizing anything you are doing here, but just hoping to help you ask yourself the right questions.