refugiums stop algae. Here's how.

[Sk8r]

If you've got an algae problem that won't quit, the best answer, before anything that eats it or scrapes it or otherwise removes it, is a refugium.
2 ways to attach one:
1. as a 'closed loop' system, ie, pump water out to it and it gravity-feeds back to somewhere in your main system: setting a small adjacent tank up at a slightly greater elevation can do this handily, with nothing more than a cheap thin-wall tank and a maxijet 400. If you want to get superfancy you can do bulkheads, but I'd walk on coals before I drilled my main tank. Hint: if it IS sitting right beside your main tank put a piece of black paper between them so light from your fuge doesn't get to your tank at night.

2. as part of your sump---or----do the above system, but pumping from and gravity-feeding to...your sump. If you have room inside your sump, just use the second chamber as a fuge. I set my skimmer on eggcrate above the sump to get this room: it's worked very well. Both the skimmer pump and the return pump are in sump chamber 4.

How does a fuge stop algae? It's a phosphate-eating machine. Its algae [cheato is ideal for this: avoid caulerpa, ime] is lit 24/7. Your tank is only lit half that time. Guess which sucks up more phosphate? [Phosphate: algae fertilizer: comes from bad water or dry fish food or dead algae. You never test positive for it: test is virtually useless---your eyes tell you everything: namely, if you have algae, it's in there!] Within a matter of weeks you'll see pest algae start to fail in your main tank.

Even better, you can sell your old used phosphate to other reefers, who need cheato. Divide it and sell off the growth.

And better yet, it produces copepods, who both eat algae, and feed corals and dragonets. You want a dragonet? Have a 20g fuge going full bore with copepods he can't reach to decimate and you'll keep him in good health.

[Kryptikhan]

Diatoms about gone.....clean up crew is in.

Just got around to start the fuge project. Got an Ott-Lite from Home Depot. 17w growth light. With a 7 buck clip on. My question is, before I add macro...can I just lay the macro ontop of rubble? Or is a DSB a must.

Or, can I just have macro there ?
Light will be running opposite of my daytime lights.

Thx

[Sk8r]

I'd advise using cheato as your macro for several reasons: it can succeed with no DSB or rubble. It just rolls in the current, has no roots, so if it does get loose into your display, it can't root. It never goes sexual and spores and kills your tank. And wait! There's more! it also serves as a pretty good filter sock, and traps particulates, which get slowly eaten and otherwise disposed of.

This is where the DSB can be of use when you get around to putting one in: mine has a honking great dune that slows water down, and its microlife helps digest anything that falls down onto it. I have a rubble pile as a breakwater [I have a horrendous 1000gph flow through the front end my my fuge---not ideal! so my arrangement slows everything down and lets the little pods multiply.]

I use a 13w light---yours should be great.

You can use an opposite light cycle if you have ph or heating concerns. Otherwise there's no reason [with cheato] not to let it go 24/7---that way it REALLY outcompetes the display for phosphates. There's no time at which the display can get anything all to itself.

[mg426]

I can and will attest to the benifits of a refugium. Made a big differance in my system.

[jsr]

Sk8r: Do you have picture of your sump setup? I am building a new one this weekend and would like to see how you have yours. Dimensions would be nice too.

[Sk8r]

my pix that happen to show it are pretty crappy: it's a basement sump, and getting a good angle is not easy.

The first [entry section] chamber is 3" long with a 'floorbased' baffle that lefts water spill over at water level. Water enters via gravity, falling in via a 1 1/2" hose from upstairs. Water from the skimmer also comes here via hose to be cycled through yet one more time to get rid of microbubbles.

The second [fuge section] is about 20" long with 1/2 'curbs' at the start and finish, an inch before either baffle. This helps keep the sand from wandering: just a strip of plexi only 1/2 in high. Then the 'floorbased' baffle that leads to the heating chamber. Chamber 2 also holds the 'float switch' that controls water level via my topoff pump.
Not in the picture: a 32g ro/di tub that feeds up to a kalk reactor, which feeds a single 1/4" locline tube over to chamber 4 of my sump. THis is my topoff. [A kalk reactor has no moving parts: its just a chamber where your topoff ro/di [pushed by its own pump] meets lime, dissolves it, and gets shoved [by the same pump] on to trickle into your sump. THis supplies both alkalinity and calcium for corals and fish at one stroke, no snowstorm.]

The heating chamber is only wide enough for the heater, and wiggle room, and ends in the only 'ceiling based' baffle in the whole rig. Water passes from the heater UNDER the adjacent baffle to get to the pump chamber.

The pump chamber [chamber 4] is about 15" wide. My return pump is bulkheaded through from the outside, and, outside the tank, sits on the old tank stand that is its base. Above this chamber, on eggcrate, is both my fuge light [actually over chamber 3, a 13 w light on 24/7] and my skimmer, which draws from a pump inside chamber 4, spills into chamber 4 if it overflows, and feeds its outflow back to chamber 1 via a hose as previously described.]

The silly spiderweb above it all is me desperately tying up the stretchy hose I used [it was cheap: Lowes: 50 cents a foot, something like that] so it wouldn't stretch clear to the floor. I've got to neaten that up someday.

[m1enbo1]

good info.
i have my fuge with very little flow. chaeto does not tumble. does that affect growth?

[Sk8r]

Best if it does roll, I'm told, but mine is now the size of a basketball, so I turn it by hand once a week, which shakes loose pods, so my mandy gets very happy upstairs.

That Iwaki 100 is a beast: puts out 2000gph---which I have cranked way back to half, via a ball valve, because my tank is only a 54g. It would blow water right out of the tank and across the living room if I opened it up wide. THat still means water hits my fuge at about 1000gph minus the braking as it transits the first baffle, but the dune/breakwater and then cheato ball slow it to something sane in chamber 2.

[BodiBuilt]

Check out this awesome thread on sump's for some good idea's

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...5&pagenumber=4

[Sk8r]

thanks for that, bodibuilt! It well illustrates that a sump can be anything from a rubbermaid box to a meticulously plumbed creature in glass.

[MrSquid]

This thread is priceless - thanks all for the great stuff here.

[newsalt]

sk8r,

I just put a softball size bunch of Cheato in my fuge a few weeks ago in hopes of it eating up phosphates to cure a little hair algea problem in my display. I one of your previous posts on this thread, you mention that the chaeto traps particulates... that's ok? Cause that what's happening to mine. The lighting for my fuge is a 5500k CF bulb I got from HD. It's on a reverse cycle from my display lighting. It's on 16hrs a day. Should I do the 24/7 lighting? Thanks for the help.

[seapug]

All sk8r is missing is a firepole to slide down when the kalk topoff system goes bezerk.

Seriously though, thanks for this thread. I'm planning a fuge "2nd display" project for after the holidays. Good to see other people's setups.

[Sk8r]

Seapug, you should have seen me when I blew the kalk system. Coated.

Newsalt, trapping particulates is fine. Micro creatures will eat and convert it, no problem.

[Haksar]

This is a great thread plus the link,but very frankly I am lost. First and foremost what is a cheato.From what I have understood bro Skr8 has made a DSB in a sump and switched on the lights the whole time.Correct me if I am wrong and then after that I am confused.Sorry bros still a newbie so still taking some time in understanding the setups.

[goldmaniac]

alright, so I've used Caulerpa Prolifera for years, it grows well, but i always have hair algae and sometimes red slime in my refugium, as well. So it's performance could be better.

Is Chaeto the undesputed champ of nitrate and phosphate consumption? I'm willing to rip out my Caulerpa to give it a try.

who has used both Caulerpa and Chaeto, and what do you think?

Also, a deep sand bed in your 'fuge helps as well: I can stick my finger into the 2" - 3" sand and bubbles escape. They're nitrogen gas bubbles, the anerobic bacteria in the sand is eating nitrates, converting to harmless nitrogen gas. So the macroalgae AND the sand are both consuming nitrates. one-two punch for nitrates... I have no skimmer and nitrates are consistently around 2,3,4.

[wicked_NaCl_h2o]

Originally posted by Haksar
This is a great thread plus the link,but very frankly I am lost. First and foremost what is a cheato.

This is chaeto..chaetomorpha

[capn_hylinur]

something that has not been mentioned --there are two distinct uses for a fuge that really depend on flow:

for filtration--lots of cheato--lots of flow through there to expose it to more of the water column

to harbour and produce a greater number and variety of inverts and useful bacteria------cheato ---flow should be about 1/10 of the main flow through the sump.

mine is dedicated for producing more inverts: its dyi so it ain't pretty but it gets the job done

[capn_hylinur]

Originally posted by Sk8r
Best if it does roll, I'm told, but mine is now the size of a basketball, so I turn it by hand once a week, which shakes loose pods, so my mandy gets very happy upstairs.

That Iwaki 100 is a beast: puts out 2000gph---which I have cranked way back to half, via a ball valve, because my tank is only a 54g. It would blow water right out of the tank and across the living room if I opened it up wide. THat still means water hits my fuge at about 1000gph minus the braking as it transits the first baffle, but the dune/breakwater and then cheato ball slow it to something sane in chamber 2.

how many feet of head pressure. I have seven feet and am using a mag3600---with a couple of bends etc its giving about 2000 gph. But is going through a whopping 360watts per hr.

In anothe thread it was suggested to downgrade to a pump that is only pushing 3-5 turn over rate per hour--due to the berlin skimmer.
What's your thoughts on this.

[capn_hylinur]

Originally posted by goldmaniac
alright, so I've used Caulerpa Prolifera for years, it grows well, but i always have hair algae and sometimes red slime in my refugium, as well. So it's performance could be better.

Is Chaeto the undesputed champ of nitrate and phosphate consumption? I'm willing to rip out my Caulerpa to give it a try.

who has used both Caulerpa and Chaeto, and what do you think?

Also, a deep sand bed in your 'fuge helps as well: I can stick my finger into the 2" - 3" sand and bubbles escape. They're nitrogen gas bubbles, the anerobic bacteria in the sand is eating nitrates, converting to harmless nitrogen gas. So the macroalgae AND the sand are both consuming nitrates. one-two punch for nitrates... I have no skimmer and nitrates are consistently around 2,3,4.

they are both good but the chalerpa has more of a possiblity of going sexual esp if the lights are on 24/7----and you don't want to wake up to having to do a 60 per cent water change

[goldmaniac]

I've heard the Going Sexual problem is overstated. Just other RC'er's viewpoints. I don't have the knowledge to dispute what your'e saying. But I think i have the sexual problem beat... I've had a fuge a Caulerpa for 5-6 years, in two separate refugiums, it's never gone sexual.

this my thinking, which is the basis of what I do:

in order for plants to flower, or go sexual, there needs to be a sustained period of darkness. doesn't matter what length of time the light is on, it's the period of uninterrupted darkness that makes plants [on land] go sexual.

So I run my 'fuge lights for 12 on/12 off, but I have lights turn on for 30 minutes in the middle of the darkness period. That essentially cuts the dark period into two shorter dark periods.



If anyone knows for sure that I'm wrong with this thinking, I am definitely interested in hearing.

However, I've never run them 24/7. For that reason, I can understand why Chaeto would be able to out perform Caulerpa. Twice the Lights On period would mean twice the nitrate reduction. simple.

I love simple.

If caulerpa goes sexual with lights 24/7, then I will not argue your point, as you're teaching me something, here.

back to my Q about Caulerpa vs Chaeto:

Anyone have experience in both Caulerpa and Chaeto?

[capn_hylinur]

Originally posted by goldmaniac
I've heard the Going Sexual problem is overstated. Just other RC'er's viewpoints. I don't have the knowledge to dispute what your'e saying. But I think i have the sexual problem beat... I've had a fuge a Caulerpa for 5-6 years, in two separate refugiums, it's never gone sexual.

this my thinking, which is the basis of what I do:

in order for plants to flower, or go sexual, there needs to be a sustained period of darkness. doesn't matter what length of time the light is on, it's the period of uninterrupted darkness that makes plants [on land] go sexual.

So I run my 'fuge lights for 12 on/12 off, but I have lights turn on for 30 minutes in the middle of the darkness period. That essentially cuts the dark period into two shorter dark periods.



If anyone knows for sure that I'm wrong with this thinking, I am definitely interested in hearing.

However, I've never run them 24/7. For that reason, I can understand why Chaeto would be able to out perform Caulerpa. Twice the Lights On period would mean twice the nitrate reduction. simple.

I love simple.

If caulerpa goes sexual with lights 24/7, then I will not argue your point, as you're teaching me something, here.

back to my Q about Caulerpa vs Chaeto:

Anyone have experience in both Caulerpa and Chaeto?

you might want to ask that question on this thread:

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...readid=1257080

and your opionion would also be appreciated---I'm always open minded like yourself

[goldmaniac]

thanks, I'll run some searches... I've never heard Chaeto to be superior, just alternately just as good. Maybe something to it...

[audio101]

I don't believe in the 24hr lighting for a refugium, I just have my refugium light go on the same time as my main tank light and everything is great plus zero algae. : )

[newsalt]

How long would it take to see a difference in phosphates and a possible die-off of hair algae.