Do you Really Need a refugium?

[outhouse]

almost 30 years, tried them all. chaeto didnt last long, scrubber didnt grow enough well, huge GFO reactors still didnt always maintain a clean tank.

did manage years without water changes and explosive growth. with the different methods.

Now I skim well, run carbon and a little gfo and fish only vibrant, tank has never looked better.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

Im on the fence. Running one now. Bigger is probably easier, less maintenance and bother

 

[jmichaelh7]

Will not run an aquarium without Refugium with chaeto. Keeps my overstocked 90g with low PO4 & NO3. Keeps aquarium in balance and avoids so many other things. Here‘s my cheap egg crate refugium with Neptune Grow light.

Your sump looks clean without algae growing on skimmer or everywhere

 

[jmichaelh7]

Absolutely love my 0 maintainance refugium. I do not grow chaeto, I just let whatever algae grow in there and explode and scoop out a handful every couple of weeks. Right now its got a very diverse group of algaes, various hairy kinds.

Added an egg crate with 1/8 mesh on it that cut across the water flow. Algae grew on that too kinda like dyi algae scrubber

This also resulted in a very healthy amphipod and copapod population. Kinda gnarly to see 1/2 inch "sea cockroches" crowling in there...

DT is spotless bc all the algae is growing in fuge instead.

Feed very heavy and overstocked livestock. No3 never exceeds 1 and po4 never exceeds 0.04.

Been running this "method" for 6 months now. Tank is 4 years old. Other methods of setting up fuge the "normal" way with chaeto and keeping it clean has never worked out more than 1 month.

Would like to see a pic of yours!

 

[attiland]

Thinking of upgrading my sump again from 30gallon to 70 gallon. In efforts to start refugium. What do y’all think?

Just get external algae reactor. Save your money for corals

 

[Discotu]

i kinda like fuges...they're like another mini aquarium to look at

 

[Dkmoo]

Would like to see a pic of yours!

Here you go, not much of a looker bc the theory is, the dirtier it is, the cleaner my DT is (the uglies gotta grow somewhere right?)

What's floating is a "GHA ball". The crate and mesh i just harvested this weekend so not much regrowth yet.

The side view - pic can't really do it justice but its teeming with amphipods. On avg at any time there's about a dozen of them crawling across. Avg size from 1/4 to 3/4 long. See some close ups, looks like the common gammarus amps. I sucked up some into a container for better pic then dumped it into my DT and it immediately became fish snack.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

This thread got me to look at refugium. In a small space, refugiums with macro, border line suck.

There was so much detritus build up, plenty of macro, that ive removed 80% of macro. Stirred and stirred until thr detritrus made its way out. Mp 40's at 90% in the tank and the filter roller is humming so fast the bearings might melt, lol...

Overnight my nitrates drop 12 ppm!

So just beware of the nitrate and detritus trap refugium.

I like the notion of them. Gives a place for algae to grow other than display.

But maintain or more harm than good.

It looks a lot better now. Lots of flow. Minimal algae. Might do good now.

If it ticks me off, this is its last chance..

 

[dwair]

Love my fuge, wouldn't have another tank without one. Super easy, just remove chaeto about every 1 1/2 weeks and gtg. Dose some Chaetogro and watch the magic happen. Also tons of pods.

 

[BillyW]

I tried a refugium. Cheatongot smothered very quickly by trash algae and I just let it go. Just recently evicted my Valentini there.

 

[blstravler]

I’ve always used one. Like that it gives a place for pods to take off and spread. Also give a space for any nuisance Algae to grow - though mine just seems to grow chaeto. I take out a ball of chaeto every week or so and from time to time give it a good stir to it any junk out.

 

[dkfrosty1]

The mention of maintenance on the fuge concerned me, as I haven’t done any….my tank is 7 months old and seems to be doing great. The fish are healthy, the corals seem to be doing finewater is always nice and clear. I run live rock and algae in both sections with tons of pods and a few snails, at least one bristle worm.

 

[sghera64]

I have a 20 gal glass aquarium as a chaeto fuge servicing my 200 Gallon system (135 Gal DT and 50 Gal Frag system). I agree with all the benefits cited above and one more: The thick nest of chaeto helps knock-out larger particles from the water. Yes, it drops to the bottom of the refugium where pods eat it and reproduce in it. But knocking out these particles before then get to the other 20 gallon which holds the skimmer, heaters and filter sock takes some of the load off of the filter sock and skimmer. The chaeto acts like very coarse filter.

I let the detritus accumulate for 12-18 months and then suck much of it out.

 

[Mywifeisgunnakillme]

The mention of maintenance on the fuge concerned me, as I haven’t done any….my tank is 7 months old and seems to be doing great. The fish are healthy, the corals seem to be doing finewater is always nice and clear. I run live rock and algae in both sections with tons of pods and a few snails, at least one bristle worm.

If you have enough water and flow and not too much macro algae to collect detritus and nuisance algae does not take over and your macro actually grows and you can access and clean the refugium easy enough so its not a chore and it does not breed too many aptasia, ick, flat worms, bristle worms or other pests--then they can workpretty well.

I've always had one.

As you might have guessed, i might not on one of my tanks in the future, we'll see....

 

[Reefer825]

I haven't had much success with growing Chaeto which is probably due to my error being knew to this. I opted for an external Algea reactor and purchased the Tunze 3181 due to size of my sump. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works once my tank is cycled. I've considered, and have looked into getting a algea scrubber. I really like the method of how they work. I would need to learn how to plumb one in and might go that route at another time. Every method has it's pros and cons. I'm assuming it's what works for you in the long run. I've seen beautiful tanks with refugiums and beautiful tanks without them. One day I'll have good advice, lol.

 

[MJV15]

Thinking of upgrading my sump again from 30gallon to 70 gallon. In efforts to start refugium. What do y’all think?

Refugium is not needed there are other less maintenance and space hungry ways to keep excess nutrients in check. If nutrient control is what your after. I use 1ml of TropiMarin NP bacto balance per day in my 180g display and it keeps my heavily feed tank at 2nitrates and .04 phosphate.

And by heavily feed I mean an auto feeder drops mix of pellets 5 times per day. And I put seaweed on a clip every other day and feed a bit of frozen once or twice a weeks. Tank has 17 fish ranging from tangs down to clownfish.

Other filtration includes a compact filter roller and a skimmer.

it’s on a doser and a 25$ 500ml bottle last… 500 days or longer. If it ever gets below 2nitates I skip a few days and then start back up.

Just my 2 cents

 

[Bruce Burnett]

Never did a fuge have thought about it. ATS did great but not quiet. Did home-made algae reactor and only got hair algae to grow. Don't know if I will ever do a fuge or ATS again Don't want the maintenance.

 

[Maxcmo]

It took me a bunch of adjustments to get mine dialed in:

-I tried one Tunze Refugium light which was not enough I had to add a second to get enough growth. The advantage of these lights is being able to keep them low or in the water to avoid light spill and algae in the wrong places in your sump plus their cheap. I found a controller on Amazon for both of them pretty cheap.

-Flow was an issue the chamber was getting nasty so I added a 275gph powerhead which helped but my divider would not let the top water flow out and I couldnt make a dent in the dirty water with the powerhead so I drilled 8 holes in the divider at the waterline. This worked great and after 2.5 months, throwing out my chaeto twice, and cleaning the chamber by pulling everything out I finally seem to have dialed it in…

I am lighting from the top and bottom and had to use the eco chic white below the refugium light was out of stock if your wondering why one is pink and one is white…

 

[Delloman]

I run an apex with a gro over refugium it has this spinner for my cheato he has multiple sizes works so well. Can't keep nitrate in my tank above 0 since it spins there are no dead spots. I just pull some out when it stops spinning.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Refugium-C...2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0

 

[Tim Olson]

I really like having a refugium. Here are some reasons:
• Tons of Amphipods and Copepods, which I need for my Mandarin Dragonet and Ruby Red Dragonet.
• I feed heavily and the fuge absorbs most of the Nitrates.
• I can control nitrates much better and to dose Potassium Nitrate to maintain Nitrate levels.
• I still have algae in my tank, but it's mainly Caulerpa macro algae. This provides a place for the pods to populate to feed my Dragonettes.
• Chaeto growth exploded with I got a Kessil H380. Before that Chaeto would barely grow.
• I run Core 7, which is designed to work with a refugium
• It's essentially maintenance free, except for removing Chaeto every 10 days.
• Profit - I take out about 1/3 of the Chaeto from my 10 gallon refugium every 10 days. This is about 3-4 gallons of drained chaeto. Then I sell it to my local fish store for $25-40, depending on the exact amount. That's about $900-1,500 per year, which pays for most of the food and testing reagents.

I hope this helps.