Rate of flow thru refugium?

[birch]

I have been wondering what the reccomended flow rate thru a refugium should be. I have a 75 gallon SPS dominated tank with about a 25 gallon sump. Half of the sump is a refugium with some live rock, a deep sand bed, and some macro algea. I grow a ton of halimeda, but the chaetomorpha I always try doesn't do well at all. I run a 13 watt compact fluorescent bulb with a reflector fixture from home depot for about 11 hours a day and the flow is about one gallon per minute thru the refugium...maybe a bit more. Thanks.

 

[Moort82]

Thats a pretty slow flow through there. I would add a little powerhead to get more water movement over the dsb, it needs this flow to feed oxygen to it and keep it healthy. I would also put the cheato on a shelf so the top of the dsb is kept clear.

You could try turning the cheato everu couple of days as this helps it allgrow rather than the top, which speeds up overal growth.

 

[RVANANO]

I added a powerhead to my fuge that always keeps the cheato slowly spinning. It brightened up and started to grow like mad.

 

[birch]

Thanks for the input. I have an old koralia nano I can put in there for more flow and to tumble the chaeto. I could also open up the drain line from the tank going in to the refugium to increase the flow. Would this be benificial?

 

[REEFERJACK]

yeah cheato needs(requires) flow through it or it will die, it happened to me and it just dumped a bunch of junk into my water, nitrates went way up, and water smelt like anti-freeze. weird but true. took me a while to figure out that it was the cheato that did it. So a massive waterchange and increased flow through the fuge and that fixed it.

 

[birch]

Cool, thanks for all your help. I think I will increase the flow then and see if I notice improvements in the chaeto growth and overall tank health.

 

[AfricaOffroad]

Most literature I've read on the subject reckons between 2-5 times your DT volume per hour (Julian Sprung's book springs to mind)

 

[birch]

Yeah, my flow is definitely slower than that reccomendation.