Refugium question

[Davidb6]

65 reef in one room, 30+ refugium (setup as a display) in another, unattached.

How can I get my reef benefit from this without a major plumbing job?

Would it be of any value to physically move water between them? I’m ok with the added maintenance.

Take one gallon (or quart) from the reef and dump it in the refg every day / vise versa

I have a small (3gal) HOB refg I could use for live food for the 65 as well.

Is this of any value?

I'll set it up right some day!

 

[Steverino]

Wha tis the benefit you are talking about? Is one tank higher than the other? Are you opposed to a couple pipes between them? If you have a HOB fuge on each one, you could transfer the chaeto/pods.

 

[Trigeek]

Davidb6,

One of the greatest benefits a refugium adds (IMO) is the export of nutrients from the system by macroalgae. To gain this benefit, the sytems need to be "attached." However, if you are just looking for a way to transport microfauna (pods etc.), then you could "grow" them in the fuge and transfer them to the main tank (i.e. use a small porous piece of live rock, let it sit in the fuge for a month or two, then place it in the display under a strawberry basket for a few days, letting the bugs crawl out). You could do this in your seperate "display" fuge and then use your HOB as an algae tray for nutirent export. Pods will also grow in your HOB if you have macroalgae in there.

 

[Davidb6]

The benefits I’m looking for are three fold - live food for the reef, supply of (excess) nutrient free water and a nice tank to look at.

If the reef water could be considered nutrient excess water than the refugium could be considered nutrient free (less) water.

With plumbing, the refugium would cycle 720 gal per day as opposed to my manual 1 gal per day. I didn’t know if it makes sense to physically move water between them to try to get any of that value at all.

The tanks are about 35 feet apart and have no internal overflows…not a good situation for plumbing.

 

[earthboy17]

I recently added a refugium that was INTENDED to be HOB, but I didn't have room for it. So what I did was pretty simple; I put the refugium at a higher altitude than the tank (so no pump was needed to go from refugium to tank), and then used a simple submersible pump in the tank to send water up, through plastic hosing to the refugium. Although I did this in a space of only a few feet, there's no reason you couldn't do it over a longer distance.

Your main problem would be getting enough pump power to move the water, but I suspect several pumps could be used in-line (or just have one powerful enough. I have no idea how to figure this out.