Refugiums

[Caoineag]

Motorslave, I have seen quite a few posts HERE where a person starved a fish to death, acknowledged that they had done so on the way to making their system more appropriate for SPS. I was not saying that all people do it, but for my personal comfort, too many people transferring over to BB or even a cleaner system passed it off as an oh well, I starved the fish, guess I can't have that fish in this type of system.

Two most common fish for this to occur with is the Lawnmower Blenny and the Mandarin.

I am not saying that I don't see the purpose for BB, in some instances I recommend BB but just as my biotope doesn't appeal to you, yours does not appeal to me. I just wish people would accept that and move on. I do get tired of everyone telling me that my system is wrong because it has algae. I understand that BB people love their BB but please accept that I like my tank the way it is as well.

As to being out of line, I apologise if my frustration from constantly being told that I should do my system differently came across but as I said about the fish, people have been negligent with starving fish in the switchover to cleaner systems and I don't think that kind of oh well attitude is a good thing to advertise. I don't mind when they say it as a warning but sometimes people seem just too accepting of it as inevitable instead of acknowledging that the fish will likely starve and giving it a new home.

[motorslave]

No one is slamming your system. this thread is for arguments sake a little but mostly to get us looking at the issue of a fuge from all angles. We try to disect it and see all the points. Geoff is getting us thinking. Dont like BB? Okay. Point taken, it disgusts you. As you said, different strokes for different folks. i am soon going to set up a 75 with a DSB for my son. It will have fish and coral and they will all get fed. but it will be balanced and there wont be any hair algae if I do it right and he learns his husbandry. An unbalanced system can result in algae taking over and killing coral.
AS far as posts here with someone starving a fish, Happily? More likely un informed. Now, Im going back to the discussion about fuges and all aspects of the pros and cons.

R

[VWD]

Many way to have a reef. Thets the thing I really don't think one way is right. I have BB system and skimmers and then I have refugiums. It all comes down to what works and appeals to You. I will say that for my reefs that I like the BB set up the best. I have fish but very few in it.

[motorslave]

Too many fish in a BB kinda defeats the purpose if its an SPS system. I like lots of set ups. At the time, SPS is my obsession so Im doing what I can to increase my odds of success. Ive seen BB tanks full of awesome SPS and they have a fuge. Im not sold but Im not against it either. I think they have a purpose in the right aplication!

R

[Geoff]

i am sorry, i prolly have been a touch terse in my posts. my fault. trying to keep up with about 20 threads right now, and i may be to terse in some of them, so i am sorry if i am leading this discussion badly. i will be more carefull.

Caoineag and VWD- you both have great arguements i am just trying to feed off of these to keep the discussion going. i am not trying to "bash" at all here, again sorry if i am coming across as this.

G~

[motorslave]

geoff, dont the skimmer and fuge act on different levels of the nutrients they remove? I mean, does the skimmer remove more readily available disolved solids, while the macro in a fuge removes more specific nutriants?
I see where youre going with that question but do the two do the same thing on the same level?

R

[motorslave]

Would the macro feed on nutriants that are less accessable to a skimmer due to, well, size?

R

[Geoff]

there are a lot of people that do accidentally starve thier critters to death. this is mainly due to a lack of research in the beginning. this can also be attributed to rushing the tank cycling process, always trying to get rid of various early algaes with a big stick instead of waiting it out untill the initial nutrients are used up.

mandarins are usually a result of mixing biotopes and filration methodologies. IMO-the only way you will be able to keep a mandarin in an SPS system is if it were BB and extremely heavily skimmed and siphoned. that way you will be able to feed enough to keep the pod populations up. if you plan on keeping a mandarin in a SPS system with a DSB, then you have an uphill battle. it is hard to keep the tank clean enough for the SPS to keep from being overrun by algae and difficult to keep the DSB clean enough to keep it from absorbing phosphates at a ridiculous rate.

G~

[Caoineag]

No prob Geoff, just too many posts lately that I have encountered hitting me the wrong way. Motorslave and I have been pming to discuss this issue and it really maybe that I need to post a thread devoted solely to document what I am doing with my tank. After all, not many people like growing algae unless its coralline (I am growing that too ) but I do have a sort of unique biotope and an introduction to all the algaes in my tank, what is working, what is not and why, may be what I need to do so I don't feel like no gets what I am doing.

Sorry, I try to be nice and balanced but you weren't the only one whose posts were a bit, shall we say "coarse"? I promise not to take things so personally and to take sometime next time to remember that you weren't the one I was upset with. Frankly I think you are doing a great job and hope you keep up the good work, discussion is always good for learning.

[Geoff]

your tank is out of the norm, and that may be most of the problem. not that it is a problem, it is the fact that most people just post answers without actually reading what is going on. i know i have inserted foot into mouth several times because of this. most of the time i think this is the problem. they have their standard answer for the standard setup, when a different setup comes along and they post thier standard answer i can easily see how a person can get annoyed.

G~

[Geoff]

as far as i know for what we are talking about, algae and the skimmer remove the same DOC's. as long as you have a variety of bubble sizes the skimmer will remove all kinds of DOC's. or any kind of dissolved solids. plankton included.

macros as we are talking about are mainly interested in phosphates and nitrogen. pretty much what you see on the side of the fertilizer bag for you lawn.

from my experience and from reading others, corals are different, but the skimmer is by far the more powerfull of the DOC remover. there is a chance that running a skimmerless system with a varried DSB could make keeping Goniopora's possible. this generally is not practical.

G~

[Caoineag]

Originally Posted by Geoff

as far as i know for what we are talking about, algae and the skimmer remove the same DOC's. as long as you have a variety of bubble sizes the skimmer will remove all kinds of DOC's. or any kind of dissolved solids. plankton included.

macros as we are talking about are mainly interested in phosphates and nitrogen. pretty much what you see on the side of the fertilizer bag for you lawn.

from my experience and from reading others, corals are different, but the skimmer is by far the more powerfull of the DOC remover. there is a chance that running a skimmerless system with a varried DSB could make keeping Goniopora's possible. this generally is not practical.

G~

Hmm..not sure that I actually buy the idea that most skimmers are that good, some for sure are but generally I do not believe the average hobbyists has a skimmer that can rip everything out of the water, and if they do, then they must be spending a load on additives or doing massive water changes daily to replenish nutrients. Seems to me that something that efficient would be as bad for the Corals due to trace element removal crippling growth and potentially being fatal though I definitely agree that almost any skimmer will pull critters out of the water since it can pull chunks of algae, detritus, etc out of the water.

I do agree that the skimmer is more powerful by far, just not necessarily the most exact in what it pulls. Easiest way to test this is to plumb your refugium after the skimmer to see if it can survive (all water going through skimmer before reaching refugium). Anyone tried that?

[Geoff]

i actually had my fuge setup that way. all water going into the fuge had to go through the skimmer first. i was not able to keep anything in the fuge. it just became this nasty settling tank. i am not sure where all of this settling stuff came from. do not know if it made it through the skimmer or was just the die off from all of the stuff i kept putting in there to try and get the fuge to work. to many variables for me to actually give you a decent answer though.

skimmers only remove those substances that stick to bubbles. as far as i know inorganic compounds do not stick to the bubbles. trace elements, Ca, alk are not removed by the skimmer in any real quantities. if you run your skimmer very wet than it will remove some of these, but they are in their normal proportions as far as the volume of water removed.

G~

[Caoineag]

I would say then that your skimmer was more than enough for your system then if you think refugiums are solely for water purification. I wonder though if that is what people actually think they are for. I never did but then we have already established that I have some strange ideas about things .

So I would think to keep debating refugiums you would need to ask and debate how well they function for other things.

[Geoff]

i think that that is biggest problems with refugiums. they are touted as this fix all, yet nobody really knows what they do. everybody feels they need to have on in their sump. you see people trying to cram a skimmer a sump and a fuge all in a 10g tank and wonder why they have bubbles everywhere.

fuges need to be cleaned like anything else in the system. another thing that most aquarists do not realize.

G~