reeferhabit
New member
I just added a refugium that has 2 inches of mud and a small ball of caulerpa. Shoud I add anything else (critters, mangrove, fish)?
what is in your refugium?
- Thread starter reeferhabit
- Start date
Fretfreak13
I am not a boy!
The point of a refugium is to breed little critters, like copepods, away from the main tank's creatures that eat them, so in all truth you shouldn't have any other animals in the fuge. I would suggest keeping it open, just in case you get any nasty hitch hikers or maybe a rogue fish, so you can exile them down there until you have another home for them.
I can't follow my own advice though. Mine has a mantis shrimp I added on purpose. lol
I can't follow my own advice though. Mine has a mantis shrimp I added on purpose. lol
reeferhabit
New member
how do you transfer the coepods from the refugium to the display? Will the return pump kill them all? I have a mandarin so it would be good to have the coepods.
Palting
New member
I have macroalgae, 3" sandbed, a bit of live rock, and have seeded it twice with pods.
Originally, the refugium was meant to be just that: a refuge for things you want to keep but cannot survive in the DT. Things like seahorses, that are too slow to eat and cannot compete with regular fish for food. They are now used for other purposes: nitrate export and pod propagation being the most common.
The ideal refugium would drain by gravity to the DT to allow the most number of copepods to survive the transfer to the DT. I find that impractical for me, so I have it drain to the sump, then pumped into the DT. I may lose some copepods, but that's the breaks.
Originally, the refugium was meant to be just that: a refuge for things you want to keep but cannot survive in the DT. Things like seahorses, that are too slow to eat and cannot compete with regular fish for food. They are now used for other purposes: nitrate export and pod propagation being the most common.
The ideal refugium would drain by gravity to the DT to allow the most number of copepods to survive the transfer to the DT. I find that impractical for me, so I have it drain to the sump, then pumped into the DT. I may lose some copepods, but that's the breaks.
agold11520
New member
My 30 gal fuge has about 5 sps frags on plugs, a big ball of cheato, and about 20 local North atlantic grass shrimp. I put the shrimp in last year to feed some Look downs that we had seined locally (NY). The remaining shrimp produce eggs constantly which end up as fry in my display. Way better than copepods! Lighting is a aquatraders 150 watt metal halide pendant which keeps my cheto ball and sps frags happy!
Crawfish00
New member
My refuge has small pieces of lr then 3" sand bed with cheato, mangrove, then return.
Jesse, I wiped it down for the picture!! It was brutal this morning.
fishsuse29
New member
I've got Caulerpa, Chaeto and Money plant alage in my fuge as well as a couple pieces of rubble rock. And the ocassional softy frag
Crawfish00
New member
heres mine
Crawfish00
New member
SushiGirl
Premium Member
I have a 3" sandbed, a few lbs of live rock, growing chaeto, some feather caulerpa that hitched in on the chateo that we keep a close eye on, a cerith snail who's constantly busy, a couple of stomatellas (hoping they'll breed), a snail that I found at an LFS (didn't know he only ate clams & sessile snails when I got him, they didn't know what he was or even that he was there...I'm keeping him alive hoping he'll eat vermetid snails if I get any LOL) who I feed pieces of frozen clam, 3 tiny hermits to clean the rocks & sandbed, one nassarius, and a huge amphipod population that is having a constant 'pod party 24/7. There are also copepods in there. We take the chaeto out & shake it into the DT every once in a while to populate pods there for when we finally get a fish since we have a sponge on the return pump to keep from sucking up the snails. Oh, and have the cyano thing going on in there right now, but not in the DT. Only been running since late October.
This is it when we first got the chateo and hadn't had the diatoms or cyano hit yet (nor the huge pod explosion).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99248541@N00/5173456364/#/photos/99248541@N00/5173456364/lightbox/
Sorry for the link, it wouldn't load the pic.
This is it when we first got the chateo and hadn't had the diatoms or cyano hit yet (nor the huge pod explosion).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99248541@N00/5173456364/#/photos/99248541@N00/5173456364/lightbox/
Sorry for the link, it wouldn't load the pic.
I have 2 plant trays about 1.5" deep flipped over siting on the bottom with egg crate placed over the top of them. Rubble rock I hand picked from my display that was covered with tunicates and sponges on the egg crate and a thick carpet of cheato about 3" thick hovering over the rock....a modeled cryptic zone type refugium. It's been up for two months and tubes attaching to everything down deep.
muttley000
MTS Sufferer!
I have 8 inches of sand, some live rock pieces, a couple different kids of algae, a few aptiasa, lots of small snails and pods, and a crab that hitchhiked in my live rock. All lit by a 100 watt 6700K spiral flourescent.
