New Refugium (Contents, flow, lighting). Good enough?

[Wally.B]

Have some questions about my new refugium.

I have an 65 Gal SPS tank, that as soon as I try to increase lighting to proper PAR levels, and try to increase photo period to proper length, I get Algae. I back off and Algae subsides.

Let's put aside Nitrate and Phosphates discussion wrt. to Algae. They are near undetectable, but recently Phosphate has shown up on Hanna tester.

Highest Phosphate was 0.14, but usually 0.04. Nitrate 5ppm.


I have added a big CUC crew of various hermits, snails into Display Tank, and a few in the sump.

So I'm trying to improve some algae control. Algae scrubber is on my wish list, but want to try this first.

For now I'm testing adding a small refugium to my sump.

2.5 GAL Refugium below:

- Small 2.5 Gallon Aquarium
- Trickle feed off DT return line
- Got a bundle of Chaeto Alage
- Couple of live rocks from my tank (have more to add)
- Some critter could be added (hermits, snails)
- Currently just glass bottom, but could take some Sand from main tank.
- Mangrove plant borrowed from sump for decoration. (Have a few).

Couple of questions.
- Is this a complete waste of time since too small, or will this help?
- Is the trickle feed (two tubes) good enough. Or need much more passthru flow?.
- Should I add a 1" of live sand from tank?
- Critters? (Snails, Hermits)
- (I feed Live Copepod to tank for Mandarin from Farm). Could add to refugium.
- A small Fish. (Can't see any benefit since not display at all).

Lighting for Chaeto
- My sump is in a sump room, right next to IN-WALL TANK as shown below.
- REfugium get's light from the tank as shown (MH 250W, T5(ho). Is this enough light?
-------- Or should I add more lighting?
-------- Or should I run refugium Lighting white tank is dark (alternating schedule)?

The refugium it mostly about growing the Chaeto and containing in the 2.5 Gallon tank (Don't want it getting into Skimmer Pump, Return Pump, or tank). Other stuff in Refugium is extra Bonus in my opinion.

Or as I mentioned above. Complete waste of time? Waste of water space in sump?

Appreciate any advice.

 

[C3hutson]

Refugio's flow should be lower than flow through the rest of the sump. It's not too small to build pod population IMO. I wouldn't plan on a huge nutrient export with that size though. Don't know about a DSB that small... Wait for someone else to chime in.

 

[FishN00b83]

to make a refugium effective it needs to be a decent size. I've read in multiple places it needs to be at least 20% of the size of the DT to make a good impact on nutrients and most people just don't have refugiums that size. does that mean if yours is smaller it won't work? of course not, people do have smaller fuges and it works for their tank. if you're having nutrient problems though, adding a undersized fuge will probably just cause more headache than anything else.

I would try an algae scrubber before I went for a 2.5g fuge. they aren't to hard to put together and they could catch up to the nutrients in a few weeks. I'm going algae scrubber with my 180, and I don think I'm going to miss the fuge all that much.

 

[C3hutson]

He says he has a mandarin though. IMO the goal of his Refugio's as a pod sanctuary is the most important thing right now, and 2.5gallons is fine.

 

[Wally.B]

He says he has a mandarin though. IMO the goal of his Refugio's as a pod sanctuary is the most important thing right now, and 2.5gallons is fine.

Yes, I do have Mandarin. But I have a separate 10Gal Tigger Copepod Farm. for it. I also add live Brine Shrimp, cultivated in jars once in while. So he is fine for food.

I'll May keep the Fuge to lessen the need to add from Farms. Or just as experiment in Chaeto growing.

So I'm and leaning towards the Algae scrubber, based on comments so far.