Hob refugium question

[Sexytang]

I don’t have a sump on my tank or any room to add anything to the back of my tank because I have it way to close to the wall. Question is could I add chaeto to my hob filter in the open area and leave the top off and my tank light grow it.
I’m wanting to make it where I dont have to do wc weekly my corals get mad if I don’t do wc weekly and I’m not running a protein skimmer could I order a cheap one that’d just runs off a air stone my tanks is a 36g bowfront and been running 11 months

 

[Sexytang]

Anyone

 

[Sexytang]

Will be in the middle water goes through carbon then chaeto then the polyfil

 

[SDK]

A couple of thoughts:

You can “probably“ do it if you have something rigged to keep the chaeto in, but......

High flow compressing the chaeto coupled with not much light getting to it is going to make the whole thing not very effective.

Youd be better off hanging another separate hob filter next to your current one and setting it up specifically to be an HOB refugium. Lower flow, more room for chaeto and it’s own light source.

 

[Sexytang]

There’s plenty of light will have just as much light as my tank gets because the light is right above it and would have same amount of room because the chamber is open I have the carbon right where the flow comes in and the polyfil on the outtake if u can see in pic chaeto can’t get out due to the polyfil. Has a little blue peace that came with filter to set on the lip of the outtake

 

[SDK]

Yes, but it will be down inside your filter and you will have floss in front of it. Chaeto mats down quickly and needs strong light to grow quickly enough to export nutrients. It’s also a pretty small area.

Go ahead and give it a try. Just don’t have overly high expectations. My guess is that you will wind up with a compressed mat of dead chaeto, or it barely hanging on as a best case...

 

[Dj City]

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but...
It won't work.

Not enough light
Not anywhere near enough space

You will be wasting your time and energy. You need much more room to attempt this.
You would need a hob filter at least double the size as your current filter. You would need dedicated light in tje correct spectrum.

I'm sorry, it just won't work.

 

[Uncle99]

It’s way to small to provide any real benefit