Show refugium?

Anthingy

New member
So, I'm brand new to fishkeeping, but I'm helping my wife set up her first marine tank (after assorted tanks through her life).

In looking at how a refugium sump setup is laid out, it seems like it would be easy to cut a window into the lower case so that illuminated seaplants sway in the current of the pump-flow.

Looking at people's setups, it seems this is not normally done? Why not?

Also, thank you all for having such a helpful forum available!
 

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You can do that. there will be a lot of life in the refugium. I don't for several reasons. the light is on at night. I do not keep it clean like the dt.
 
+1. If you really want to, countersink magnets, and place a door that's removable to you have the option to cover it... Would be cool

You can do that. there will be a lot of life in the refugium. I don't for several reasons. the light is on at night. I do not keep it clean like the dt.
 
I think the main reason is that it's not as pretty and well maintained as the Display Tank. But there are some good examples out there, especially those with mangroves, showing how the filter portion of a setup can be beautiful too.
 
So, the issue isn't that there's an actual reason not to, it's just that keeping the fuge at display quality isn't usually worth the time (especially since there's all the life in the upper tank to distract people....)

Thanks!
 
You can keep it clean with normal maintenance. You shouldn't see any nuisance algae with all the macro that you'll have, so cleaning the glass and keeping a CuC in there will be more than fine to show off you fuge.
 
Your drawing looks very similar to my tank setup. I don't have a refugium but yet its just another tank with fish in it.
So i have a 125 gallon tank that drains down into a 40 gallon tank which is sectioned off (pretty much 10g where the return pump is and 30g where i have 2 fish and my starfish). I did this because I wanted a reef tank but i have a chocolate chip starfish which is not reef safe. I'll post a pic tomorrow if I remember.
 
Guys, there is no such thing as a refugium in the way it is used these days.
In the 70s and 80s it was a place where you put a fish or invert that is having problems, a place of refuge!
The name is used incorrectly as is the environments construction, upkeep and water conditions that near all go with!

There are things you need to apply to these areas of algae and the other bio functions in there, to enable it to completely account for all nutrients from life’s waste, toxins from invertebrates and metals from all forms of life.

This type of thing can be made to copy the oceans conversion and purification processes quite easily, but basically no one does this.
I haven’t seen another one built in the ways needed for all this to happen, with out the help of a skimmer as yet!
A skimmer actually retards outcomes of an area like this, if built correctly!
 
^^^ disagree refugium is a refuge for all your pods and other little critters that can reproduce and not have to worry about being dinner
 
Thankfully, most of the people here seem to use the word to describe a bio-filter tank setup. I'm so glad I don't have to talk about how things are today using the language of how things used to be. There would be far too much "do you mean awful like the common modern meaning of 'bad' or do you mean awful like, 'full of awe to inspire me'?"
 
You still didn’t get it!
Many grow algae that incorporate enormous content of calcium carbonate, which is over a substrate in that refuge, and in this algae there are deaths and shedding of algae which all ads calcium to help block up the substrate.

Then you have plankton size or slightly larger creatures above and in the surface of that substrate like pods that shed constantly to grow, their shells add a great deal to the blocking affect with in that substrate.

A part from anything else in there like organic mater, you have a substrate blocking from all this in what becomes over time, a semi useless refugium, because it is not used in the way it is suppose to be used.

I don’t care about the name; I give a dam about the meaning and use of the area that has a name that means nothing about what it is being used for and lowers the results a reefer could get.

If you have it producing plankton life and over flowing into the tank, you take a chance on spores of those algae with in getting into your tank as well.
Nothing competes with pod production like a near bare area with just chaeto, it comes alive with them and no pollution from a grubby substrate to the display tank and you just lift it up and shake and heaps of pods for reef life’s dinner.

If all requirements are in place, nothing removes nutrients, toxins, and convert’s metals and reduces some nitrate like racemosa on chunks of specific porous rock on a raised floor that can be cleaned under it.

To me in a way it is like the word “depression”, it means nothing of the complaint. Something that affects most people on the planet in one way or another and they give such a debilitating internal deformity such a stupid name!

There are so many easy ways to do it right and they are rarely carried out or termed adequately!
 
The reason I don't display my refugium is I guess its a bio-filter tank. I have a skimmer, heater, return pump(visible), little temp gauge, sock. Making the rock in there along with Macro and pods not that pretty.
 
I only do a quick clean once a year maybe, just mainly settling per filters as nothing gets to it, this is mine.
It’s very complex!

system-27-7-13-_zps391a92f4.jpg


algae-area-28-0613-_zps6f80b6d3.jpg
 
I have a display refugium right next to my display tank. They both overflow down to a common sump that has all of the equipment (skimmer, heaters, reactors, etc). I have 3 types of macro algea growing in there along with a manderin goby and a couple soft corals. I have to clean the glass but to me it's worth it. Its a completely different type of ecosystem that I enjoy watching. A great contrast to my mainly sps display tank.
 
You still didn't get it!
Many grow algae that incorporate enormous content of calcium carbonate, which is over a substrate in that refuge, and in this algae there are deaths and shedding of algae which all ads calcium to help block up the substrate.

Then you have plankton size or slightly larger creatures above and in the surface of that substrate like pods that shed constantly to grow, their shells add a great deal to the blocking affect with in that substrate.

A part from anything else in there like organic mater, you have a substrate blocking from all this in what becomes over time, a semi useless refugium, because it is not used in the way it is suppose to be used.

I just witnessed this first-hand when I cleaned out my fuge after many years--it was also serving as a RDSB based on recommendations from my LFS guy when I first set it up--miracle mud layer covered with a sand layer.

As I went to clean it, I noticed that the top inch of sand was actually somewhat hardened--nothing I couldn't break up with my fingers, but solidified none-the-less.

I had assumed it was detritus packed up--never considered calcium deposits.
 
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