How should I proceed with my Triton Refugium?

[gpwdr]

So, I need to take another pic, but my fuge is now what someone else on the forum referred to as, "A brick of chaeto". lol
In other words, the entire fuge is filled with a dense cube of chaeto (and those small bits of other macros mixed in).
What I'm a little worried about now, is the chaeto possibly blocking the teeth/slots that send the water to the middle section of my sump.
If I'm going to leave the macros untouched, I'm wondering if there should have been an extra baffle to separate the macros from those slots?

Here's a pic of my sump again so you can see what I mean. The slots are on that red baffle on the far right.
How is everyone else handling this? Think I might need to periodically trim after all?
I'm trying to keep an eye on this daily. I don't want to wake up one morning to a flood due to a cheato dam.

D2mini,
May I suggest you raise your protein skimmer up as much as you can? This will prevent algae from plugging up the unit. The bits of algae will flow under the skimmer. The material to be skimmed will be higher up in this compartment too.

 

[d2mini]

I think you should remove 2/3rds of your macro algae or more. Bring it back to the tennis ball size you started with. It stops being a productive export when it can't grow anymore. I usually take 2/3rds of my macro algae out every other week. Keeps it nice and fresh and does wonders for the tank. Lets me feed the system as much as I want with lots of good fish and coral food.

This is what I've done in the past but this is the Triton forum and we've been discussing leaving it alone and letting it do it's thing.
So far Nitrates are still undetectable. I could use it to slow down a bit! lol

D2mini,
May I suggest you raise your protein skimmer up as much as you can? This will prevent algae from plugging up the unit. The bits of algae will flow under the skimmer. The material to be skimmed will be higher up in this compartment too.

I don't have algae escaping the fuge. Everything is running fine.

 

[d2mini]

Decided to have a little fun with my huge.
Here it is now... it's getting to be like gpwdr's in the pic above. lol

 

[Psymon]

T_T this is hilarious. Can't believe it. Would you say the algea chamber is saturated now? Growth slowed down? What you think?

 

[Tim@Triton Verified Sponsor]

Decided to have a little fun with my huge.
Here it is now... it's getting to be like gpwdr's in the pic above. lol

At least you will know where your heavy metals will come from

 

[Tim@Triton Verified Sponsor]

Just to be clear, you CAN remove algae if you want to, for example when it starts restricting water flow through your sump.

 

[d2mini]

Just to be clear, you CAN remove algae if you want to, for example when it starts restricting water flow through your sump.

Haha yeah I've been keeping an eye on it and so far so good!
Will see how it continues.
Thanks Tim!

 

[d2mini]

T_T this is hilarious. Can't believe it. Would you say the algea chamber is saturated now? Growth slowed down? What you think?

Not sure. Hard to tell once it fills the space.
And I'm really low on fish right now. So very little nutrients in the tank.

 

[Andy]

I used egg crate to make a fence in sump. Sectioned off 3/4 cheato and 1/4 other macro. Egg crate keeps it from clogging drain slots

 

[d2mini]

So just an update...
Been noticing a lot more noise from the sump. Apparently water is flowing faster through the partition from refugium to skimmer section.
I checked it out and that hefty, thick chaeto brick in the video above is now breaking down and deteriorating. And clogging the teeth a bit.
I'm assuming this is just part of the "cycle" when leaving everything alone and not trimming? Or is it something else?
I have been meaning to send off my second ICP test since setting up this system in June, so I just did that this morning.
Maybe that will show us if anything is out of whack that would cause a drastic change in the cheato.
The display tank is still looking great so I'm not worried about, but very curious as to what would cause the change in this little experiment.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

So just an update...
Been noticing a lot more noise from the sump. Apparently water is flowing faster through the partition from refugium to skimmer section.
I checked it out and that hefty, thick chaeto brick in the video above is now breaking down and deteriorating. And clogging the teeth a bit.
I'm assuming this is just part of the "cycle" when leaving everything alone and not trimming? Or is it something else?
I have been meaning to send off my second ICP test since setting up this system in June, so I just did that this morning.
Maybe that will show us if anything is out of whack that would cause a drastic change in the cheato.
The display tank is still looking great so I'm not worried about, but very curious as to what would cause the change in this little experiment.

not likely part of the "cycle". check your nutrients to make sure there's enough food for the plant. failing that perhaps the light is too bright.

 

[d2mini]

not likely part of the "cycle". check your nutrients to make sure there's enough food for the plant. failing that perhaps the light is too bright.

I thought about both of those.
The weird thing is lighting has never changed, and I've actually been feeding a lot more since I added Anthias.
Originally, nutrients were nearly undetectable. I haven't checked in quite a while though. It's on my list.

 

[TylerS]

Really interesting. Have you noticed changes in any of the other algae?

 

[Psymon]

I have noticed that my chaeto brick is a real off yellow greeny color at the top half. The bottom deeper areas of chaeto are that deep green color one is used to seeing. I also have my mars 3000 lighting on for 12 hours.

Dennis are you able to remove your 90deg elbow? Mine just terminates by shooting straight down. I imagine by doing this the water has more contact time with the refugium algea as opposed to being shot in the direction of the next chamber wall.

Hope this part isn't too off topic.
What was interesting for me was. As I set this tank up. I started on the minimum triton dose. And did tests each day. I kept upping the doses higher and higher until it seemed to stabilize at 20ml of each element. I slowed down on testing. Then I waited a few days and tested again. All ok. Then a few more days. By this time the chaeto ball had become a solid brick. I tested again and freaked. The alkalinity was over 9000! Joking 9.4.

So I think what happened is that the refugium was just soaking up all these nutrients and then reached its maximum and then stabilized/saturated, and couldn't take on any more elements as it had no space to grow. I have dropped the daily dose all the way to 6ml. And seems to finally be close to the "magic 8", I lost some hystrix due to the sudden shock(rtn), but otherwise things been looking pretty good. I haven't moved the dosage area to the refugium, its dumping into the return chamber in a high flow area.

 

[d2mini]

I have noticed that my chaeto brick is a real off yellow greeny color at the top half. The bottom deeper areas of chaeto are that deep green color one is used to seeing. I also have my mars 3000 lighting on for 12 hours.

Dennis are you able to remove your 90deg elbow? Mine just terminates by shooting straight down. I imagine by doing this the water has more contact time with the refugium algea as opposed to being shot in the direction of the next chamber wall.

Hope this part isn't too off topic.
What was interesting for me was. As I set this tank up. I started on the minimum triton dose. And did tests each day. I kept upping the doses higher and higher until it seemed to stabilize at 20ml of each element. I slowed down on testing. Then I waited a few days and tested again. All ok. Then a few more days. By this time the chaeto ball had become a solid brick. I tested again and freaked. The alkalinity was over 9000! Joking 9.4.

So I think what happened is that the refugium was just soaking up all these nutrients and then reached its maximum and then stabilized/saturated, and couldn't take on any more elements as it had no space to grow. I have dropped the daily dose all the way to 6ml. And seems to finally be close to the "magic 8", I lost some hystrix due to the sudden shock(rtn), but otherwise things been looking pretty good. I haven't moved the dosage area to the refugium, its dumping into the return chamber in a high flow area.

Sorry, just saw this!

I still have the elbow. I could remove it... it's pointed more towards the front than towards the baffle. It was helping keep things spinning early on.
I did not notice a shift in alk uptake.

I do have an update on the cheato.
It's seems as though it had reached it's peak around the time of that video or a little after.
It has since been breaking down and sending my skimmer in to a bit of a frenzy.
The tank looks good, nitrates are still low at around 2 ppm.
But my latest (2nd) ICP test showed that p04 has sky rocketed, which makes sense. ICP says it's around .24

Not sure what to make of it, so just observing for now.
Best case, the cheato rebounds at some point and starts growing again.
Worst case, I take out the remaining and start with a fresh ball.
It's been several weeks already.

If I do decide to remove the remaining cheato I'll go ahead and add the divider to the sump to separate cheato from other macros and begin trimming as it grows too big.

 

[Reefahholic]

I'm fixing to get mine up. I'm gonna do a remote 40 breeder with cheato and in my sump I'll try some other macro's with fern caulerpa being my primary.

All this talk Triton does about having a refugium....I've yet to see their own refugium. Does anybody have a picture? I love to see what they have setup. I wanna see size, macro's, etc.

 

[Tim@Triton Verified Sponsor]

This is the only image I have of the sump on my computer.

Very simple, 3 chambers, algae first, skimmer then return. Thats it

 

[gpwdr]

Thanks for the pic Tim.
Do you only dose Al99 with that reactor?

 

[Tim@Triton Verified Sponsor]

AL99 run in the reactor yes.

 

[gpwdr]

Do you run only Al99? No rowaphos? You can't put rowaphos in that reactor, the holes are to big.