Pod-maximizing refugia

Excellent thread. As a newbie, building my first system, I thought I might be broken, being so interested in the refugium as opposed to the DT. I really think, in my relative ignorance and inexperience, that a large and thriving refugium with maximized micor-fauna production would be the "secret" to a really healthy coral environment. Here is a pic of my new sump/refugium; 150g DT on the way.
Delivered1.jpg

The refugium area is approximately 25gal in water volume, and I'm planning a five inch sand bed. Need to decide on grain size(s). I had not panned on rubble, but am re-considering now. I plan on as dense of a stand of various macro algae as I can feed, focusing on reds. I was also intending a 24 hour light period, but am re-thinking that now too. Skimmer suction is pre-refugium, which although it looks odd, I'm actually glad I'm doing now, based on what Ive read here.

I will be following closely! Open to any and all insight and direction, eager for it actually.

THANKS!

(The pod condo is an awesome idea! Shelter from flow where flow control is limited.)
 
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To be honest I saw that "pod condo" prior to making mine. I actually have some gutter guard in my garage but I still chose to spend $2.99 on mine for 2 simple reasons. One being their is a lid that I can open and directly feed and pour more dr g's pods in and the second is because it has a handle I can lift it out and drop right in my DT. It also somewhat controls my pods to staying in the condo and not getting caught in a current and floating away to be eaten by my CBS.
 
Hey hopefully my post didn't come off as condescending as that was not the intention.

I ended up using fishing line to have something to grab onto to lift out of the fuge.
 
I'm glad to see this thread took off, and I'm very pleased to read all of your great ideas.

Moort, you take the cake with your multi-fuge experiments!:hb2:

I think the consensus so far is that diversity of habitats is one key to maximizing microfauna proliferation; Moort gave us some great examples of the different life he sees in different "zones". I'm now going to re-consider including an above-tank refugium in my tank-build (thanks to the nice guy who posted the link to the reef-builders article on propellers and pods. It always sounded fishy to me when people told me that a return pump wouldn't hurt a pod lol. I guess if it only kills 30% then that is fine though.

I took a magnifying glass to my fuge last night and discovered something interesting: pelagic (free-swimming) pods of some kind! Normally I've only seen the ones that stay on surfaces like glass and rocks. I know that planktivores such as anthias would LOVE to have a steady stream of pods who live in the water column. I also noticed I have a bunch of mysids that live in my overflow box. I've had these mysids for some time and if I ever leave some live rock in a bucket for several hours they will be swimming around near the top (maybe for oxygen?).

I think for the new fuge I'll use a 20g long or maybe a 30g long to have multiple zones so that I can maximize the number of habitats. I read something by Ron Shimek that said the worms living in DSBs have larvae that corals love to eat. So I think I'll have a DSB zone, a macroalgae-stuffed zone that is lit on a 12-hour reverse photoperiod, a cryptic (non-lighted) zone stuffed with live rock rubble, and a final zone with my mangroves (because I just like mangroves).

I'd given up on this thread and was glad to find some cool information when I checked it a couple months later :)

If anyone has any pod- or microfauna- experiences to share, please do so!

EDIT/ADD: Also, btw, thanks for the cool idea of the pod-condo. I imagine there could be a number of variations on that idea that could be put to great use! I think it would be especially helpful for the majority of reefers who don't want a crazy, heavy, dangerous above-tank refugium lol. Especially if a mysid population were active in the refugium - there is no way I'd believe a mysid would make it through a return pump in once piece!
 
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I maximized my pod population by keeping iodide levels a bit higher than NSW .08 instead of .06. The higher levels encourages them to shed and grow faster. Also cover your pumps so that the babies don't get demolished in the turbulence . I keep 2 mandarins in 30 gallons along with a Percula for over a year. Mandarins are ridiculously fat, more like torpedoes really lol. I feed my pods spirulina as well.
 
People are always talking about using those plastic dish scrubbers as pod hotels ... Any body try using a bunch of these in a fuge ?
 
The pod condo looks like a Critter Keeper...you can find them at Petsmart, Petco...they're made to house hermit crabs and crickets, and uh, pods :)
 
To what extent does plant life contribute to pod production within a refugium? I have heard that dosing phytoplankton to a refugium is one way to greatly improve the production of food organisms.
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I'd say that pods and plants are proportional. And phyto is a pretty standard food to give to copepods cultures.

Given the fact that whenever I prune balls of chaeto, there are a TON of little copepods and amphipods which fall out, I imagine that they are either feeding directly on such macros, or feeding on something else that feeds on macros. Is there any data for this?
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Well they certainly do eat the macro; there are careers devoted to this :) Other stuff too probably, but certainly the macro.
 
I accidentally deposited a coral-eating Galveston blenny into my refugium...I think doing so will not help my microfauna. The little bugger will eat anything.
 
I'll be setting up my multi-stage refugium over the next few days. I'll post some pics once I get it running. Anyone have something like what I'm going for?
 
If one were to put rubble on top of a sand bed, would it affect the function of the sand bed?

My guess is that the rubble would prevent or hinder the "flow" of water through the bed caused by pressure and flow over its surface, yet rooting macro algaes may do the same...
 
Plankton farm

Plankton farm

Just chiming in with some slightly relevant input and a question. I have a 6 inch diameter by 6 foot tall clear plastic tube in the garage. It is like the plankton reactors that you see for sale but much bigger. It has a strong pump to push air to the bottom of the tube and a heater. I feed it phyto paste one or more times a day. This tube gets 2 gallons of water pumped up and over the brim from the display tank per day via peristaltic pump but it is evenly stretched out throughout the day and night with a timer. Gravity takes the affluent back to the tank.

My primary thrust is to grow rotifers but from time to time the population has more pods than rots, depending on several factors that I can control. When I get sloppy, I get more pods. Anyway, the rots and/or the pods make the 50 foot trek back to the tank with no problem so I get a constant supply. This system works great so far and I get millions of critters from it.

I understand rots do best on phyto but pods can live on almost anything, powders, plant matter, yeast, etc. so they can be cheaper to grow in mass. I am working on some hardware at a snail's pace but once I have it done, I hope to go to 6 or more of these tubes tucked along the wall, out of the way of the cars. At that point I will dedicate a tube to pods only and in another, I will try to raise mysis but I here that they are much harder to grow in an environment like this.

I have been told that the population of pods will grow slowly until it reaches a critical mass and then it will explode. They should do fine with the oxygen and higher nutrient low that comes from waist so that is a good thing.

Unfortunately, my sump is now before the tubes for mechanical reasons.

Does anyone have any advice or critique of the system that might help me out? I want to avoid problems that might come up.
 
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Herring Fish, can you post a pic or two. I think I can visualize your system but a pic would help. Are you replenishing the rots or pods occasionally?
 
herring_fish said:
Sorry for the belated update.
CritterTowersFlow6.jpg
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herring_fish said:
RotiferDensity.jpg
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herring_fish said:
PlanktonTube.jpg
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As I said, I am waiting until I finish some hardware, like program controlled 110V AC outlets and other things. This means that my thread is on hold for a while so I am not fishing for viewers. I also don't want to hijack this thread but I thought that my description would fill in some information for some of you, just like saying, "This is what happened in my commercial venture." So ...if you have comments please offer them up. They would be helpful to me but if you have a question that doesn't relate back to your fuges than go over here:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1970938&page=4
and I will be happy to answer off line.

I hope these picture spark some ideas for your refugiums.

P.S. Lavoisier It runs by itself except for the feeding that will be automated. It doesn't crash and I have run it for 4 months at a time but I do run experiments with other parts of the system, which means that I have to take the tower off line. When I do, I have to get a new batch. ...but no, I don't replenish it. To some degree, I can turn the population it up or down or encourage pods or rots when I want.
 
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I think the comment on replenishment brings up an interesting point. If we are essentially attempting to maintain a large "herd" population that self sustains, frequent introduction of new genetic variations would be important. Without the addition of outside influence we will be trimming down the natural genetic differences in the population and relying only on mutation instead of natural selection. This could increase the risk of disease or environmental issue causing a "crash".
 
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