Display refugium

[Jboone82590]

I didint really know where to pot this at so I figured this was the best place....

I have a 75 gallon tank with a 14 gallon frag tank and a 40b sump.(will have a build thread when I have the time to post it all)
I have a 29 Gallon tank that I am upgrading from this tank and everything in it will be a year old in a few days and I don't really want to get rid of it because its an awesome tank so I'm thinking I'm going to upgrade my pump and make it a display fuge so I need some help.
Good or bad idea??
What kind of plants/algae?
What kind of fish/ livestock? (Have some sweet zoas and palys I'll put in there)
What kind of rock or should I stick with the same rock? ( what about the Gulf view live rock with the algae on it?
What about flow?
And anything else all of you can think of?

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[collegereefs]

I have a few questions that should allow for more specific responses to your questions.

Will the display fuge be connected to your main tank or a stand alone setup?

Do you want it to be a biotope?

Do you want to keep seagrasses?

Do you want to focus on reducing nutrients or appearance?

 

[Jboone82590]

I have a few questions that should allow for more specific responses to your questions.

Will the display fuge be connected to your main tank or a stand alone setup?

Do you want it to be a biotope?

Do you want to keep seagrasses?

Do you want to focus on reducing nutrients or appearance?

Thanks for the reply
Yes it will be connected to the DT and upgrading the pump will do that for me and i don't have anything in mind for the type of plants or animals I want in there.
I would like to help with some nutrients but I am in the process of making an algae scrubber to help with that
Thanks again

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[Michael Hoaster]

If you are building an algae scrubber for your main display tank, connecting a refugium is redundant. The algae scrubber will out-compete your refugium plants for nutrients. It sounds like you are interested in plants with no other motive, like nutrient uptake, or plankton production for your display. If that's the case, I'd do a stand-alone tank for your plants, so you can tweak conditions to better suit them, rather than a reef display. Or, ditch the algae scrubber and let your display fuge do the nutrient uptake. If you keep your main display nutrient poor, there won't be a lot to feed the plants, so don't expect explosive growth. If your display tends to run higher nutrients than you like, that would be ideal for a planted display fuge.

Without any particular plants in mind, check out some sampler packs, like they have at live-plants.com. Try a bunch. See what lives. How about lighting? Bright, daylight colored light is best IMO. You don't need huge water flow, but some is needed. Live rock isn't necessary but you can add some if you like. For live stock, I recommend starting at the bottom of the food web, with live sand, worms, snails and plankton. For fish maybe there's a fish you'd like to have in your display but it's too timid to survive, for example, a yellow head jawfish. Or maybe you'd like to do a goby/pistol shrimp combo. Refugiums are great for fish etcetera that are too wimpy for your display.

Since you don't seem to have a super clear vision yet, do some studying and see what direction it takes you. Good luck!

 

[jraker]

+1 to what Michael said. You have the choice of the algae scrubber or the dusplay fuge, both of them won't work out well. The ATS will outcompete the refugium for nutrients, meaning that plant life would die.

As far as livestock, the samplers at Gulf Coast Ecosystems provide lots of diversity in macroalgae. If you are looking for tons of diversity, you could order some live rock at Gulf Live Rock or TBS. You don't have to though, I personally started out with dry rock on my tank. ISPF offers some amazing packages of worms and small critters that add lots of biodiversity and functionality to a tank.

 

[Jboone82590]

I think I'm going to do the display fuge and not the algae scrubber because that never even crossed my mind that they would be hurting each other I'm very glad I posted this here and i really want the display fuge for pod reproduction and just because it gives me a reason to keep this tank and not git rid of it.
The tank is over a year old now so it has quite a bit of bugs and critters in it already I will get more tho so it is more divers.
I really love planted tanks I had a 75 gallon planted tank that I had to take down because it was just getting to be to much and the 75 gallon reef tank won lol but I still have a 20l I'm setting up and I have a 29 Gallon planted tank that's still running now.
I have a fluval marine light not the 2.0 but the one before that with the little switch on the side. Will that be good enough light cuz it grew my coral like crazy from montis to zoas and shrooms.
I think I'm going to keep the LR to save a little money and just get a few macro and micro packs from a few places.
What could I use for the flow I have 3 power heads in the 29 right now do I need to keep them or can I just use the flow from the pump?

There fist is a pic of the 29 and the second is the 75 sorry it's 11 pm here and i don't have any recent FTS of them.

I'm going to rescape the rocks in the 29 and get it to be able to take flow better so I don't have to worry about behind the rock like I do now I have a power head back there.

I might go a little less on the rocks so I have more room for the plants is that a good idea?

Thank you both for taking the time to help me out with this I really appreciate it a lot..... [emoji1]

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[Michael Hoaster]

I personally like less rocks in a planted tank, but it's your call. For flow, you just need to have your plants moving a little, so they can get at the water nutrients and respire. Adding plants to a year-old tank should be much easier than a new tank.

 

[Jboone82590]

I personally like less rocks in a planted tank, but it's your call. For flow, you just need to have your plants moving a little, so they can get at the water nutrients and respire. Adding plants to a year-old tank should be much easier than a new tank.

Yeah I think I might throw some of it in the sump and keep some of it in the tank and make a little scape with what I keep thanks again and I can't wait to get it hooked up to the tank and add the plants

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[gribsrule]

This is funny. What you described is exactly what happened to me. Started with a 29 gallon, upgraded to 75, had the 29 sitting around, started a macro tank. I will get pictures of mine up later. It is kind of in shambles because I had to uproot everything a couple weeks ago for a big move across town.

The main reason I got mine was to keep a pair of dragonface pipefish. I tried the pipefish in my main display but there was just too much current.

I have maybe 5-10 lbs of live rock (just a few pieces) a couple inches of sand and that about it. I have snails and sometimes I rotate a conch from my display into there if there is some extra nuisance algae to clean up. I am running some red macro algae that I got in a sampler from live-plants.com (great place to get algae from by the way!) I also have several calcareous algaes (mermaid fans and phoenix (pine cone looking things)). I would advise against the caulpera pack as it will come with rasmosea which could work its way into your main tank. I personally love caulpera prolifera. Very fast growing and outcompeted my chaeto for nutrients. Also it looks similar to turtle grass but much easier to keep and doesnt need really deep sand.

Also I only have one small power head and that is plenty in there!

 

[Jboone82590]

This is funny. What you described is exactly what happened to me. Started with a 29 gallon, upgraded to 75, had the 29 sitting around, started a macro tank. I will get pictures of mine up later. It is kind of in shambles because I had to uproot everything a couple weeks ago for a big move across town.

The main reason I got mine was to keep a pair of dragonface pipefish. I tried the pipefish in my main display but there was just too much current.

I have maybe 5-10 lbs of live rock (just a few pieces) a couple inches of sand and that about it. I have snails and sometimes I rotate a conch from my display into there if there is some extra nuisance algae to clean up. I am running some red macro algae that I got in a sampler from live-plants.com (great place to get algae from by the way!) I also have several calcareous algaes (mermaid fans and phoenix (pine cone looking things)). I would advise against the caulpera pack as it will come with rasmosea which could work its way into your main tank. I personally love caulpera prolifera. Very fast growing and outcompeted my chaeto for nutrients. Also it looks similar to turtle grass but much easier to keep and doesnt need really deep sand.

Also I only have one small power head and that is plenty in there!

I was thinking of getting those exact pipe fish just the other day haha

This is funny. What you described is exactly what happened to me. Started with a 29 gallon, upgraded to 75, had the 29 sitting around, started a macro tank. I will get pictures of mine up later. It is kind of in shambles because I had to uproot everything a couple weeks ago for a big move across town.

The main reason I got mine was to keep a pair of dragonface pipefish. I tried the pipefish in my main display but there was just too much current.

I have maybe 5-10 lbs of live rock (just a few pieces) a couple inches of sand and that about it. I have snails and sometimes I rotate a conch from my display into there if there is some extra nuisance algae to clean up. I am running some red macro algae that I got in a sampler from live-plants.com (great place to get algae from by the way!) I also have several calcareous algaes (mermaid fans and phoenix (pine cone looking things)). I would advise against the caulpera pack as it will come with rasmosea which could work its way into your main tank. I personally love caulpera prolifera. Very fast growing and outcompeted my chaeto for nutrients. Also it looks similar to turtle grass but much easier to keep and doesnt need really deep sand.

Also I only have one small power head and that is plenty in there!

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[Jboone82590]

This is funny. What you described is exactly what happened to me. Started with a 29 gallon, upgraded to 75, had the 29 sitting around, started a macro tank. I will get pictures of mine up later. It is kind of in shambles because I had to uproot everything a couple weeks ago for a big move across town.

The main reason I got mine was to keep a pair of dragonface pipefish. I tried the pipefish in my main display but there was just too much current.

I have maybe 5-10 lbs of live rock (just a few pieces) a couple inches of sand and that about it. I have snails and sometimes I rotate a conch from my display into there if there is some extra nuisance algae to clean up. I am running some red macro algae that I got in a sampler from live-plants.com (great place to get algae from by the way!) I also have several calcareous algaes (mermaid fans and phoenix (pine cone looking things)). I would advise against the caulpera pack as it will come with rasmosea which could work its way into your main tank. I personally love caulpera prolifera. Very fast growing and outcompeted my chaeto for nutrients. Also it looks similar to turtle grass but much easier to keep and doesnt need really deep sand.

Also I only have one small power head and that is plenty in there!

and I think that's what I'm going g to do is just about 10 pounds of rock and some other things and a lot of the algae

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