Replacing refugium with Skimmer and Carbon/GFO reactor?

[Tobias9413]

My 29g tank only has chaeto and sponges in the sump. I recently got an over sized skimmer and a media reactor. Would I be better off running the skimmer and reactor? I only have room for two things in my sump since it’s a 10g tank.

 

[Pntbll687]

Is the tank running fine with just the fuge? You could run the skimmer in the sump, and the chaeto in the reactor.

I would say that it depends on the bioload of the tank. If it's heavy, then a skimmer is probably a good option. If it's light, I would say the fuge would be enough.

I have a 29g with a 10g sump. I run live rock and a skimmer. Tank is lightly stocked with 3 fish, but heavy on soft corals, and a trend to feed on the heavy side, which is why I went with the skimmer.

Be careful, if the skimmer is overrated for the tank it may be hard to dial in, and could possibly strip out too much from the water.

What skimmer is it? What size tank is it rated for?

 

[Tobias9413]

Is the tank running fine with just the fuge? You could run the skimmer in the sump, and the chaeto in the reactor.

I would say that it depends on the bioload of the tank. If it's heavy, then a skimmer is probably a good option. If it's light, I would say the fuge would be enough.

I have a 29g with a 10g sump. I run live rock and a skimmer. Tank is lightly stocked with 3 fish, but heavy on soft corals, and a trend to feed on the heavy side, which is why I went with the skimmer.

Be careful, if the skimmer is overrated for the tank it may be hard to dial in, and could possibly strip out too much from the water.

What skimmer is it? What size tank is it rated for?

I’m slightly struggling with algae issues and what i think is cyano. Tank is a year old and haven’t had issues until recently. I only have three fish in this tank and quite a few of LPS corals. The corals all seem to be doing fine in the tank and have grown. I only feed every other day and I target feed my corals once a week. Lights are one 8 hours a day. I make my own RO/DI water and I make sure it’s at 0 TDS. I do 4-8g water changes every week and still have issues for some reason.

The skimmer is a Macro Aqua AWN-40 rated for tanks between 150g-300g depending on bioload. This is actually a skimmer I got for the 120g tank I am upgrading to in a few weeks. I already put the skimmer in the sump along with the chaeto and I have it dialed to where it’s a more dry skim but it’s pulled quite a bit in the 5 days I’ve had it in there.

The main reason I ask this question is because I actually got my dual reactor along with carbon and gfo in the mail today. This reactor is going to be for my larger tank too but I could fit it in this tank too along with the skimmer but I’d have to drop the fuge.

 

[Pntbll687]

I would stick with the skimmer if it's already in, and hold off on the reactor. If you add skimmer, reactor, and carbon/gfo all at the same time, you'll never know what took care of the algae if it clears up.

That skimmer is way bigger than I thought. if its working, keep it. But keep an eye on it. It may get to the point where it is stripping everything out of the water, and then foam production goes down. Then you adjust it, then foam production goes up, then there is overflow.

I would reduce the lights. 8hrs of blue would be ok, but whites should be turned down to maybe 3-4hrs a day. You'll see a difference in algae in just a few days, and your corals will be fine. Maybe hold off on the water change this week, and just manually remove what you can. Get the system as stable as possible without playing mad scientist with adding this and that and then the next product.

Does the tank have a sandbed? It might need a good cleaning.