What goes in refugium?

[Valkyrie]

Nothing for it to"eat"....your tank is too clean?

Odds are your tank is too new/clean or maybe too much GFO?

Everything else seems to grow fine.

 

[James Miller]

I would wait till your tank get established and that you protein skimmer is skimming yucky stuff out. I know that its just me but its the way i did mine and my chato went nuts. Bought a cup of it and put in a Eshoppes chato box and with in a week the box was full and had a lot of micro organisms living in it. A fair warning though, don't take any out and give to friend to help him out. I wound up with a major break out of red algae

 

[Valkyrie]

My skimmer is always skimming out a lot of grossness.

How did taking some out cause a red algae outbreak?

 

[James Miller]

the critters living in the chato box and the chato removed put more of a load on the system so that the wasn't cleaning the water like it was, so it returned back to the tank. It is like you having a party and have enough food for the 50 you invited and 30 show up and you have food left over, it has to go some where and for me it went back into the tank

 

[Xclusive Reef]

Chat only is the simplest and easiest.
Extra live rock adds Bio filtration. I like to avoid rubble as it collect detritus. Im big on cleaning. Chato is cool. Also look at dragons tongue and dragons breath. I like diversity. but some macros have special needs your fuge may not provide.Those are just options to have fun with.
Just like th DT there's a bit of see how it goes too. If the flow is a bit low you many not want to add too much stuff. You may want to add a CUC, but if theres not a lot of food in there you may not need too.
IMO start simple, and see where it goes.

Whats in mine? 3in DSB, several pounds of LR, Chato 2 kinds of caulerpa , a couple types of "dragons breath", common feather dusters, stomatellas , limpets, all kinds of pods.

can you post a pic of ur fuge so i can see what it looks like?