Fuge Reboot

[Sidewyz]

TLDR: Fighting many battles over the past year returning to hobby led to nuking the display fuge, looking for advice on setting up new.

I got back in the hobby about a year ago and got everything up and running. Within a short time we lost some fish due to ich and velvet. I bought a bio cube and a 55 gallon tank and started the Transfer Tank Method while leaving the 180 gallon display fallow. That was a brutally long time but finally I was able to return the fish to the display right before last Christmas. Things were good for awhile and I added a display fuge and started growing some macros and pods. All was going good, until I started seeing flatworms in the fuge. I separated the fuge from the main system and dosed with flatworm exit. They came back... dosed heavily and for a longer period of time.... came back, fortunately I have only found flat worms in the fuge. Through this we had an outbreak of Bryopsys which outgrew my macros and eventually made its way to the display tank and took over. I dosed with Fluconazole which did kill the Byropsys and soon after all the algae was gone. Which brings us to last week, a massive Cyno outbreak as the nutrients had skyrocketed with little to no algae. Guess what I see in the fuge?? Bryopsis in a few spots, that and flat worms are back... *** Today I fragged the few pulsing xeneas in the fuge and added them to the display on their own island. I then pulled and pitched everything else in the fuge, bleached it! I'm starting fresh.

I'm wanting to grow macros for nutrient export and pods for live foods, possibly a sea horse in the future.

A couple of questions:

I have some live rock in the sump. I question if that's a good place for it or would it be better in the fuge.
Sand, mud or bare?
Algae barn products? What would be good to start with?

 

[lapin]

Guess what I see in the fuge?? Bryopsis in a few spots, that and flat worms are back... *** Today I fragged the few pulsing xeneas in the fuge and added them to the display on their own island.

So you added non-killable flatworms to your main display?

I have some live rock in the sump. I question if that's a good place for it or would it be better in the fuge.
Sand, mud or bare?
Algae barn products? What would be good to start with?

I would leave the rock in the sump. I would toss one piece in the fuge.
Large sand is good as long as dont have too much flow. Will support some small critters.
You could start with Ultimate Macroalgae Pack and see what grows.
5280 pods to help with cleaning and feeding. Get some phyto to give them a head start.
They dont sell these (Dwarf Cerith Snail). I find they do climb on macro algae to help keep it clean.

 

[Sidewyz]

I didn’t add any rocks the Xenia’s were attached to in the fuge. I figured this would be a good time to learn how to cut one loose and attach to a rock already in display.

Regarding flow, fuges in sumps tend to have a lot of flow. This one currently is pretty low flow as I was thinking at one time to use as a fuge with sea horses. Its approx 25 gallons and fills in 10 min. Do you think this is enough turn over.