Live rock in sump with a light?

laezur · Apr 11, 2023

Hello!

I purchased a bunch of CaribSea life rock and re-scaped my tank and I'm so much happier with my tank, this has been in there maybe two weeks now. I moved all my current rock to the sump, which has been live for about a year and a half.

Weird question, but if I threw a light in the sump and let algae grow on the rocks in the sump would that help clear any algae from the display, like a weird little refugium or am I completely missing the point on this one?

I have an ATO chamber that I don't use, as I run it from a bucket, that I turn into a mini refugium if the rock thing is a no-go.

laezur · Apr 12, 2023

Dburr1014 · Apr 12, 2023

You could, but you risk the algae breaking off and clogging your pump. As long as you take steps for that, should be fine.

Sump Crab · Apr 12, 2023

If it were me I would throw in some sort of caulerpa and make it into a true refugium. Otherwise you will probably just grow a bunch of GHA in there. The GHA will also help clean the water but is ugly as heck lol! I’ll second the comment about making sure there is some sort of filter floss or sponge to protect your return pump.

Sump Crab · Apr 12, 2023

Also you can look into cryptic refugium if you didn’t want to deal with pump cloggage as much

mjw011689 · Apr 12, 2023

I think you’d be better off going with a true fuge and chaeto, or just an algae scrubber for that matter. Both of those are going to have higher nutrient export and tend to keep algae out of the display a bit better.

laezur · Apr 12, 2023

Jrain904 said:
If it were me I would throw in some sort of caulerpa and make it into a true refugium. Otherwise you will probably just grow a bunch of GHA in there. The GHA will also help clean the water but is ugly as heck lol! I’ll second the comment about making sure there is some sort of filter floss or sponge to protect your return pump.

Yeah i dont want to just grow a bunch of hair algae that's going to end up back in my display lol so maybe I'll look at some larger macro algae's I can keep in the sump. Otherwise, I'll just find a way to turn this resovoir into a fuge but not sure on the logistics of that right now