Topic of the Week August 14 - Refugiums

[Woodstock]

Originally Posted by MarbleShark

• Are the pods small enough to filter through the black sponge filter that came with my pump?
• Should I regularly be transferring some of the water from my Refugium to my tank via Turkey Baster to transfer the pods that way?

Some will squeeze through. Don't fret, there are many, many pods left behind
Unless you are spot feeding something with the pods, there is no reason to transfer them to the main display.

[Frankie]

I have a 75 gal. fuge that i built. I use pc's for the lighting 24/7. Theres LR, two types of macroalgae (razor and cheato, thanks Doni!) and a huge population of pods. This fuge is bare bottom atm. Im trying it out this way for a while to see how it works. I had a miricle and mineral mud system before and it worked well also. My refugium is set up to be elevated mud. The water comes up through the media preventing gas build up that so many mud systems have trouble with. the first picture is the 30 gal test refugium i did on my old 90 gal. the second is the 75 gal. one i run now. The pic's not updated but i have since removed the floss on the left and replaced it with a filter bag that im changing out every week.

[Cartman89]

WHere's a picture of my fuge but I've added a lot more to it now. This was like from April or March?

[MarbleShark]

Can some of you that have ones that are above the tank post some pictures? All the ones posted so far are below the tank ones.

Here is mine though.

[billyr98]

Well short on time this week ~ But here we go...

I run a 210g tank with a 100g sump that dumps into a 100g rubbermaid fuge.. its got 24/7 lighting.. and it is after my skimmer... So the only thing I dislike it the copepods need to be pumped up to my tank but.. hey we can't have it all

I have chaeto growing crazy, just took 5 gallon bucket out of it yesterday.. and some caulepra growing in there.. I have about 150-200lbs of live rock also chilling in there..

Thats about it - Here is an older pic, but about the same looking..

[Frankie]

Looks great Billy!

[Woodstock]

Nice! You need to clean that huge skimmer

[billyr98]

i was waiting for you

[Yarr]

I have a small fuge whcih i plan to stay BB and pump water from sump to it and let it drain back to return part of sump.. only plant o have macro going in there with 24/7 lighting

[sasquatch]

Great topic! 45 gal braceless sump/fuge, one end display return,centre fuge, other end back to display. 5000k compact screw in bulb 24/7. a week ago I transplanted a pile of halimeda from the display, all was good until the die off of some shoots released there stores of evil into the sand and low and behold its now all over my cheato!!!! after scrubbing and rinseing ive put it back and am hoping it all goes away lol any suggestions happily tried. oh yeah how does Topic of the week get picked?

[Frankie]

theres a poll that we vote on. keep an eye out for it tuesday.
As for the halimeda issue, i would just leave it be. The die off will break down and get skimmed out in time and the cheato should be fine. You could manualy remove the die off as best you can but that stuff is like brittle paper and will just disolve as you try to remove it. The criters in the sand will feed off of it also, so i would not worry to much. If you have enough cheato id ditch the halimeda and just go with that. Halimeda is nice to look at but very slow growing in my experience and not to efective.

[sasquatch]

Thanks FFrankie,halimeda is gone,cheato looking better, now for a little sump cleaning Lol. Will be looking for the Tues poll

[framerguy]

There has been some interest in refugiums lately so I would like to revive this thread. I would like to see photos of your fuge! What has worked for you, what hasn't? What do you "think" would work?

In my humble opinion I think a properly maintained refugium is the absolute key to keeping many of the heretofore "difficult" corals. An even better scenario would be several different refugiums linked together to try and reproduce each microcosm (if that is the right word) in the ocean.

My current refugium is a 55g undrilled tank with a DIY overflow, about 360gph turnover, two additional 125g powerheads for flow, attached algal turf scrubber, Lighting: Three 100W spotlights on alternate cycle from DT. Inhabitants: (algaes):Cheato, Caulerpa prolifera, Botryocladia, Halimeda, Coraline, and some that are unidentified, (inverts): two serpent starfish, 6 blueleg hermits, 6 scarlet leg hermits, 4 bumble bee snails, and many many stomatellas, cocepods and amphipods by the hundreds (or thousands?). Substrate: 5" DSB sugar fine sand

Water enters one end and is drained from the other into the sump for return to DT.

Since I can't get far enough away to take a FTS I will do it in an upper and lower shot. This is the upper part:


Now for the lower:


Here is one of the blue legs foraging about!


As you can see the water enters the fuge via the algal turf scrubber which just sits on the lip of the tank and has a spotlight on it.

I really think my refugium is a big part of the success I am having with some of my corals (in particular the Elegance) and feather duster.

My thoughts and beliefs on Refugiums:
1:They DO need a Deep sand bed to help with nitrate reduction. (many dissagree on that)
2:They DO NOT need a plenum (I think we all agree on that)
3: They DO need a clean up crew consisting of hermit crabs, serpent starfish, and snails (more on this later)
4:They DO need good lighting
5:They DO need additional flow supplied by powerheads
6:They need a turnover rate of 2.5 to 5 times. Some say up to 10, I don't know if that much is necessary, but it may be. It really depends on what you are keeping or want to keep.

I think a good clean up crew does more than just clean up. In their foraging habits they are munching on algae and such and as they clip, munch, scrape, break off, what have you, they are creating microplankton for the filter feeders in the DT.

Light cycle: I run my lights on an alternate cycle from my DT. I don't do it for the pH but more to provide a dark time for the serpent starfish and the cocepods to be more comfortable foraging as they are somewhat nocturnal.

I think a refugium is an ABSOLUTE necessity for many difficult animals to be kept successfully, including but certainly not limited to Catalaphyllia (elegance coral), Goniopora (flowerpot coral), All species of Feather duster worms.

About my algae turf scrubber: I read about it in Delbeek and Sprungs latest book "The Reef Aquarium". Dentoid inspired me to implement it (whether he knew it or not). I built a 1" deep tray out of 1/4' lexan with a 1"wide lip so it sits on the rim of the refugium. Water flows over the flat surface and fuels the algaes growing there. I have not identified them, there seems to be four different species. I think a verticle scrubber would be a better option. In fact, I think an acrylic "box" that is rather tall, and say 6 to 8" square, where the water enters the bottom of the box and then is broken up by LR rubble, then spills over the top to trickle down the sides would be the best method. I didn't have the luxury of vertical space in my current fuge or would have built it that way.

OK, now you know what I have. Show us what you have (with pics of course). What are your thoughts on what I have and what would make it work better. What are some other microcosms we could create for a more effective system? Thanks!!!

[cracker]

Framer I like the scrubber You built. If I may add I think there is another pic of it on page 18 in the AKwarium cronicle.
Speaking of refugiums, I have a 20 gl BB tank with chaeto only here is a recent pic. The light shown died so I replaced it with a NVision CF spot light bulb. to see how it works. The old light was noticably brighter than this NV bulb.

My intent is for nitrate removal mostly. I have plenty of DSB in the tank. Still there are pods & such in the ball so it can pass for a "Refugium". It does a good job at export but not so hot on pod production.

[framerguy]

Hey Cracker, I remember seeing your fuge in the "powerhead in the fuge" thread. It looks like it does a terrific job for nutrient export. I wonder if the pods produce as much micro plankton with their eating habits as crabs and starfish do.
Here is a shot of the scrubber up close from page 18 in my chronicle:



That salt creep is mostly pre scrubber. It doesn't spray nearly as much now, now though the bubbles do burst and make a little spray. It was aweful before!

Cracker, what light cycle do you use? I see a lot of 24/7's around here.