Refugium questions

[Jasonb]

Since I turned a 3 chamber wet/dry into a sump, I'm looking at sharing the middle chamber between the skimmer and a refugium. The fug. Will be between the skimmer and return pump. I will have 2 smaller live rocks and cheato, anything else I should add? What is the best light or what light works for you?

[Justin]

Honestly man, the best thing you can do is get yourself the following:

Figure out what you want the fuge to be used for. Some use a Fuge for Nitrate sinks, I use mine for Pod production and food for them. You should really figure out what you ultimately want to do with the fuge and then maximize that aspects. Too many people try to do too much and end up with Fuge's that are too small to accomplish either role that they choose

Some nice Chaeto or Calurpa
A shop light from HD, they are like $10
A plant bulb from HD, they are like $5
A timer, prob like $4-5
And set it up, you could have the light in sync with your main lights or be on reverse. The only benefits from off sync times is that once your fuge is well established, the o2 production from the algae will help offset the Ph dips most people see at night. Trust me, this won't happen until the fuge is really large and in full swing. I like the off sync so that I can see into my stand at night :P

Thats really it man, trim the algae when it gets too large and starts to black out the lower algae and your golden. If you have any questions feel free to post them. Also, you can see how I set mine up at the next meeting.

[Dkray944]

If you're sharing I would make sure to block off/protect the skimmer from the macro algea. As far as light, I personally use a shop lamp from Home Depot with a bulb(I believe 6,500)

[Jasonb]

Thanks for the info. It will be used for pod production mostly so I can get a mandarin again in the future.
I failed to leave the info out, yes I will put in a divider between the refugium and the skimmer, basically making a forth chamber.

[Dkray944]

Gotcha.... All sounds good to me

[Jasonb]

I'm using a 75W 5000K CFL and it's not really growing the cheato, guess I will go up in spectrum