why a refuge

[tims]

ok gang,
was not sure if this was think tank worthy, so i put it here.

why a refuge?
i am running a canister and a prot.skimmer on my tank now and do not have any problems with settings in the tank. although mine is only a 65 g. right now.

i am planning on a 125g in the next several months ( after xmass,kids first then me )

i ahve been reading and rereading just about very thread i can about refuge tanks. i still have not made up my mind on the type of filtration to use as of yet. if using the fuge' as a pod habitat then i have no problem with the set up i have now. although i do realize it would need to be on a much larger scale.

i just wanted to see what you all had to say or not say

okay tom hit me with it




" a viva dhnang me" can you guess this one geoff?

[yardboy]

I'll go first, since just today I got my CPR Aquafuge set up. My wife and I wanted a mandarinfish, since we'd seen them on dives in Asia. My 70 gallon main tank was working alive with pods and tiny shrimps, so we got the fish. Within 2-3 months we noticed the population of pods had decreased. I set up a 20L next to the main tank as a refugium, but was always having two problems. First, the overflow on my main couldn't handle the increased inflow (ph from sump into fuge) so there was always a risk of tank overflow. Second, someone (me) kept putting frags of xenia and other softies in the refugium, trying to turn it into a frag tank. The pod population was great, but every time I tried to harvest macro to remove mutrients (well, that sounds good, but it was actually to keep it from taking over the tank.) it was a pain.Have you ever tried to untangle xena from halimeda? Paranoia about water on the floor caused me to plumb the 20L overflow into the sump but now all the pods get ground so......... I put a hob refugium on the main tank. Some discussions have centered arund the potential nitrate reduction from a refugium, but when I hooked up the 20L originally I had a red hair algae problem for a while in the main and even though macro grew like weeds, I still have some of the hair in the 20.

[Imaexpat2]

In my personal opinion....I think refugiums are a great thing to add to a system. They make great methods of control for nutrient export. You grow algae and you harvest it and toss it in the trash or give it away to friends that need it. I also grow a lot of Mangroves in mine.They dont get to big and the root system they crank out is beyond words and does a great job taking up nutients. The good side to all of this is the algae growing in your refugium will deny algae the needed nutients in your main tank and lessen any algae problems there. By the time the water is cycled back into my tank from my refugium its cystal clear. It adds addition water to your system making things easier to keep stabilzed. I also add all of my additives such as calcium, stronium, iodine and what not as well as make up water to my refugium to keep my tank topped off.

Currently I have a 135 gallon tank, with a external 140 gallon refugium on a counter top next to the tank. It has 6 mangrove trees, three different types of algae, lots of live rock rubble, and live sand. The only regret I have is if I had it to do all over again I would have built my stand a little shorter and added my refugium above the tank and allowed for gravity feed back of water into my system. I am moving in about 8 months across country and will do this when I set it back up(i have a 10 ft overhead in my living room back "home"), but with the current 8 foot over head in my apartment this is not an option.

Good luck which ever route you decide to go with this.