Refugium Advice

Douggie-Style

Douggie-Style

New member
Hello all-

I am new to the refugium world and have the typical arrangement, Socks and Skimmer in first chamber, light chamber with UV sterilzer for movement as well as heater and the pump in the last chamber.

I have a few small pieces of live rock and a handful of Chaeto as well......Here are a couple of questions:

1) What is (in your opinion) the best substrate for the center chamber?
>Should I do more live rock or do just Chaeto or add other macro???
2) What are your suggestions for the lighting?
>I have been told keep them on all the time and I have been told a 12 hour cycle is sufficient and keeps the pH more stable???

Thanks everyone!!!!
 
You don't really need a substrate for the refugium, unless you have room for a deep sand bed.
I use small pieces of live rock with the chaeto, but some people just have chaeto by itself. it's all preference.
any lighting around 5000-6500 Kelvin will grow chaeto really well. I keep mine on all the time, but some people have the light turn on at night when display light is off to help keep pH stable.
 
I have 3.5 inches of sand in my fuge chamber. There are 2 emeralds, half a dozen hermits and a sand sifting star in there.

I use an acrylic chaeto stand to keep the chaeto off of the sand. The stand is practically the same size of the fuge area and has 3 holes drilled in it just above the bubble trap entrance into the fuge area. This way, heavier matter that gets past my skimmer floats into the bottom portion of the fuge onto the sand bed for my clean up crew to breakdown and the rest of the water flows up into the matt of chaeto to get rid of bubbles and scrubbed of nutrients.

My flow goes into another bubble trap and into my return chamber that has live rock in it along with a bag of Chemipure.

My fuge light stays on 24 hours a day. And I also feed my CUC un my fuge. They get pellets, dried seaweed and frozen foods (Rod's, Mysis). I don't treat them as garbage collectors. They are valued members of my reef family. :dance:
 
I had fuge with sand and now I'm running one with out sand. crushed coral to be exact it higher than my tank so ok pump water.in from overflow and drilled near top of tank and let gravity do the festival do lights on opposite cycles worked best for me
 
Steve1986 said:
I have my refugium light turn on when my display lights turn off, to balance my ph.
Click to expand...

+1
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Thanks guys.....Looks like I am on the right track. I was going to ad Mineral Mud or something like that but I have not read enough about it as of yet.

Thanks again.
 
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