100 gallon refugium

[dandrews40030]

Okay. So my set up is kind of ridiculous.
90gal visual
30gal sump - it's a three chamber sump. First small chamber has my heater, then there's a bubble catcher with a filter pad. Chamber two has some live rock, sand and two banded sleeper gobies, and a bubble catcher with another filter pad. Third chamber has a ton of live rock, and a starry blenny cause he's a bad guy and keeps trying to kill my other fish, and the pump.
Then we have a 100gal refugium. We haven't set it up yet though.

I'm looking for opinions on what you think would make the ideal refugium. I obviously had a good amount of space to work with. I know I want a bunch of chaeto. The hope is to have the minimum amount of waste product possible and as much green and plant as possible, to act as a natural filter, of sorts. I figure I need to get a good healthy bug supply, maybe some hermits and some snails, but beyond that I want to minimize the amount of waste, right? We're considering sea horses as well but we are unsure.

So thoughts on what would make the ideal, greenest, refugium?

 

[Baby Ray]

mangroves

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Keep diversity in mind. Different macros eat different stuff. And if your going big keep design in mind. Chato is kind of U G L Y so maybe not or keep it in a higher flow area. Chato is not a necessity, it just commonly does well in what we usually do. and a traditional fuge is where we keep the funk
As far as Ponies yes, but research them and make sure its doable, Ie they eat a lot and poo a lot , Im not a seahorse guy (YET!). Some like uv for them as they get bacterial infections.

So yea, Id try it. Heck yea!

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Check these out!
https://www.google.com/search?q=dis...X&ved=0ahUKEwihvsXIy4nLAhVIOSYKHQdtA0gQsAQIHg

And Welcome to reef2reef!

There's some serious seahorse folks here. And fuge folks here to. Check it out!

 

[dandrews40030]

We had considered making it more of a display type fuge but it's in a big white 100 gallon crate, not anything tank like. We figured we would just get a super good fuge and that would hopefully help to clear up all our brown algae that we can't seem to get rid of.

 

[jamie callard Verified Sponsor]

a 100gal refugium display or hidden. open top or covered. how is it going to be connected to the other systems. I have a refugium with a DSB of 6" some live rock. It has mangroves, Red dragon, Halimeda, and Maiden's Hair. My system runs DT to Sump to Refugium that has a waterfall affect back into the DT. I have not placed any CUC in the tank other then adding pods for the first three months to get a good base. I can now see them and love when they go into the water column to feed my DT

 

[dandrews40030]

It's uncovered and hidden. The display overflows into the refugium, then the fuge overflows into the 30gal sump, which then pumps back up into the display.

 

[nervousmonkey]

Try a seagrass refugium; turtle and shoal grass makes a beautiful tank and can help filter the water. Mangroves are good too but they grow slowly. Would still look great. Some cool little red-legged and blue-legged hermits would be good denizens of the seagrass biotope, as would some nassarius snails. Check out these links:
http://floridapets.tripod.com/marineplants.html
and:
https://reefbuilders.com/2010/01/23...es-making-the-case-for-aquariums-going-green/

 

[timkenagy]

I'm working on kinda the same type of setup. 180g display with 50g frag system and a 180g fuge with scrubber which all gravity flows into a 100g brute sump. You said you want tons of cheato. The only issue your gonna have is cheato and other macro algeas grows from the excess nutrients in our tank. So in order to achieve such a goal you might have to over feed your tank. I see people talking about how they have the best bulb for thier fuge all the time because the chaeto grows out of control.. But the bulb is only a part of it as it usually means thier nutrients are through the roof as well. As excess nutrients zero out you'll actually see cheato recess in size.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I do like the sea grass shoal. Perhaps a lagoon then. A top down view only. I'd choose livestock based on that notion. Much less expensive but a great animals with jobs display. No less beautiful creatures.

 

[nervousmonkey]

I do like the sea grass shoal. Perhaps a lagoon then. A top down view only. I'd choose livestock based on that notion. Much less expensive but a great animals with jobs display. No less beautiful creatures.

It would be cool to add some zoas to the lagoon and just them grow and grow until there are giant colonies of 'em in the lagoon/fuge. That's an easy set it and forget it coral...

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

It would be cool to add some zoas to the lagoon and just them grow and grow until there are giant colonies of 'em in the lagoon/fuge. That's an easy set it and forget it coral...

I have personally seen a tank with five or six ZOA and paly types and photosynthetic sponges and macros grown under the Phillips par 38 bulbs.

It is 48 k with a nice full spectrum.

 

[dandrews40030]

I'm working on kinda the same type of setup. 180g display with 50g frag system and a 180g fuge with scrubber which all gravity flows into a 100g brute sump. You said you want tons of cheato. The only issue your gonna have is cheato and other macro algeas grows from the excess nutrients in our tank. So in order to achieve such a goal you might have to over feed your tank. I see people talking about how they have the best bulb for thier fuge all the time because the chaeto grows out of control.. But the bulb is only a part of it as it usually means thier nutrients are through the roof as well. As excess nutrients zero out you'll actually see cheato recess in size.

Honestly, I can't necessarily say my tank isn't already being a little over fed. They're all pretty fat and happy fish. Lol. In our 90 gal visual we have 6 decent sized fish, and then in my sump I have a starry blenny and two gobies. So I'm not worried about not creating enough waste.

 

[dandrews40030]

I do like the sea grass shoal. Perhaps a lagoon then. A top down view only. I'd choose livestock based on that notion. Much less expensive but a great animals with jobs display. No less beautiful creatures.

We aren't looking to make this pretty or anything. The tank is hidden so no one will ever see the inside of it. I don't need it to have a super cool look about it. I need it to be at prime functionality. It should have as much natural filtration as possible. Now don't get me wrong if there's something cool and effective, I'm totally down. But I just need a good effective natural filter out of this.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Ahh. The seahorse a threw me. Then a 4 to 6 in Dsb with olitic sand live rock a diverse macro collection lotsa good worms n pods. The sum feather dusters. Cuc. Standard fuge fare and your good. Cap the Dsb with sugar sand it'll keep the dust down. Ron Shimek for info on true Dsb and ecosystems for a good visual example. Lotsa pics and video there even if your not doing miracle mud ecosystem method.

 

[timkenagy]

Honestly, I can't necessarily say my tank isn't already being a little over fed. They're all pretty fat and happy fish. Lol. In our 90 gal visual we have 6 decent sized fish, and then in my sump I have a starry blenny and two gobies. So I'm not worried about not creating enough waste.

Here's my fuge. It's only been set up for a few months and haven't decided the direction I want to go with it yet. But I went big because I'm the kind of guy that that will spend just as much time watching the fuge as the display. I'm actually liking the one f. Lloyd posted (minus the fish) and might head that way. But I might actually have to feed the fuge which goes against the reason function of the fuge. But that's ok .. I'll also follow you around like a lost kid and see what you do!

 

[dandrews40030]

Okay so that's my 90gal display. I've got a fax face rabbit fish, a green bird wrasse, cinnamon clown, blue damsel, a pajama Cardinal and a humu. There are also two cleaner shrimp, a ton of snails and I think maybe one or two hermits but my wrasse gets his big dolphin nose in there and eats all those guys cause he's a bad guy too. Lol. I've got the green carpet anemone that's I've spent 8 months trying to bring back to life after my boyfriend just kinda stopped messing with the tank and he started dying. then I have the mushroom coral, two star polyp frags and the Xenia tree. The sand bed is live sand and crushed coral and then there's about 100lbs of live rock in there.

This is a bad picture of my 30gal sump. It's not a filter in the first chamber with a heater and the return line from the refugium. The second chamber has my mated pair of sleeper banded gobies. And then the third chamber that you can't really see has my bully of a starry blenny. The second and third chamber have tons of live rock. And the second has a nice sand bed for the gobies, obviously.

This big ol' vat here is what we will be turning into the refugium. It's empty right now because we want it to get up to temp and run a few cycles through before we go and start dumping money into it. We've tested the water and it was honestly perfect. We're thinking of doing just crushed coral as the bed so we can get tons of good bugs and such. Then I was thinking of just loading up in invertebrates.

 

[20LogR]

Following along.. I have a fairly large fuge for my water volume but haven't decided if I want to go "display fuge" or just cheato yet.


What are the dimensions of the "vat". It looks to be pretty deep... Have you considered how you would light a giant ball of cheato?

 

[Brandon42]

nice tank!

 

[dandrews40030]

Following along.. I have a fairly large fuge for my water volume but haven't decided if I want to go "display fuge" or just cheato yet.


What are the dimensions of the "vat". It looks to be pretty deep... Have you considered how you would light a giant ball of cheato?

I honestly have no idea what the dimensions are. But yeah it is pretty deep. We have the lights that are currently on our display tank and we are going to move those to the fuge and then we will be buying new halides for the display. Might even put one halide on the fuge cause we are getting three.