New sump refugium question

[Hanali]

So today I picked up a new sump from Stephen and it is great. Needs some cleaning and minor mods but it will be perfect for my tank.

So here is the newest issue in me building a tank that will hopefully fall apart less while on those long work trips.

What goes in a refugium?

I have seen "Live Sand", which I will pickup from a LFS, soon. Calurpa, which I have less than a fist full that I can start with.



Any other live stock I should be worried about or any other plants?



Should I get one of those pod packages like from here? http://www.reefnutrition.com/



Will the live sand come with bristle worms or do I need to find them?



Thanks a ton for your help so far.

Kim

[erikharrison]

Deep Sand Beds (DSBs) are the way to go here along with some good macro. I am going to be somewhat of a devils advocate here when I say that caulerpa is not the right choice of macro. Caulerpa will take over your tank if it gets in the display and it can also go sexual in your tank. Chaeto is your best bet. For aesthetics, you can employ the use of mangroves, but for the to be entirely effective you would need quite a few of them. You will need to run a light over your fuge opposite the light cycle of your display. This will help with any ph/alk swings throughout the night.

As far as your sandbed goes, I would recommend getting cups of sand from some established tanks. If you want to order some GOOD stuff full of life for your tank go to www.GARF.org and order some GARF GRUNGE. That will REALLY kickstart your system.

Remember to run unskimmed water through the fuge at a slow rate of flow. This increases the dwell time of the water in the fuge thus "scrubbing" the water clean. You can just have it overflow back into the sump.

For fun, www.myspace.com/caulerpa ... Happy Reefin'!

Nassarius snails are great in a refugium as they like to burrow in the sand and keep at least the top turned.

Lastly, if you are going to re-do the sump, a good idea is to try Pressure Locking Sump Baffles. They look really handy.

[hobogato]

nice post erik

[erikharrison]

I'm honing haha.

[Ping]

Bags of live sand are a waste of money in my opinion. Sand becomes bacterially live very quickly.

along with sand from an established system, a small freshly cured live rock placed in a fuge is a big help to jump start and reseed the micro life in a sand-bed.

[Hanali]

Remember to run unskimmed water through the fuge at a slow rate of flow. This increases the dwell time of the water in the fuge thus "scrubbing" the water clean. You can just have it overflow back into the sump.

Hmmm well this will require me to rethink my plumbing some. Should not be to hard.

I will send in an order for grunge, and am in need of more sand.

Thanks for the help.

[chark]

Deep Sand Beds (DSBs) are the way to go here along with some good macro. I am going to be somewhat of a devils advocate here when I say that caulerpa is not the right choice of macro. Caulerpa will take over your tank if it gets in the display and it can also go sexual in your tank. Chaeto is your best bet. For aesthetics, you can employ the use of mangroves, but for the to be entirely effective you would need quite a few of them. You will need to run a light over your fuge opposite the light cycle of your display. This will help with any ph/alk swings throughout the night.

As far as your sandbed goes, I would recommend getting cups of sand from some established tanks. If you want to order some GOOD stuff full of life for your tank go to www.GARF.org and order some GARF GRUNGE. That will REALLY kickstart your system.

Remember to run unskimmed water through the fuge at a slow rate of flow. This increases the dwell time of the water in the fuge thus "scrubbing" the water clean. You can just have it overflow back into the sump.

For fun, www.myspace.com/caulerpa ... Happy Reefin'!

Nassarius snails are great in a refugium as they like to burrow in the sand and keep at least the top turned.

Lastly, if you are going to re-do the sump, a good idea is to try Pressure Locking Sump Baffles. They look really handy.

I am not sure I understand about the plumbing. Are you saying to use a separate refugium from the sump? Do you just split the water that would go to the sump? I was going to build my refugium in the sump. With overflow and skimmer to refugium to return in the same sump. Is that bad? What do you suggest?

[sawarf]

What is the reason for running unskimmed H2O Through the sump? Is it just to get it established? Once the dsb is aged and cycled, is it ok to run skimmed H2O through there? Still learning about this stuff... My dsb fuge has been running unskimmed for about 5 months and I have asked for a killer skimmer for Christmas. My phosphate prob is gone as is the ph & alk swing prob.

The sump is designed such that the tank overflow will feed the new skimmer that will empty to the fuge... Is this design ok?

[erikharrison]

I think the reason for this is because the macro will grow more and help remove more garbage if it is unfiltered first. I know most everyone does this opposite and tees off their returns to their fuges. I saw a cryptic fuge at Patricks house that was of easy design and he said that it works great.
What he did was take an old salt bucket, put the lid on, and put a hole in the top for a small bulkhead. I assume he teed off his water coming from the tank to partially run into the cryptic fuge and put another hole lower down on the bucket so it would gravity feed out of it. The bucket was full of sand, about 8 inches or so. From what I have read and heard this will eliminate nitrates, although finding the cause of the nitrates is much more beneficial in any regard.

I know Lee (LHoy) is doing a cryptic fuge, and I am on the verge of actually constructing some sort of demon fuge for my setup. In my current fuge, I can't ever grow any macro, and I can only assume that it's from the lack of nutrients associated with it's growth. Since I can't grow macro, I am going to section it off with the PLSumpBaffles, and run my inlet partially through the unskimmed portion to see if it will even grow.

[erikharrison]

Chark, welcome to MAAST. The answer to that question is this... Run one side of the inlet water to the skimmer side, and opposite that, create the fuge using baffles and have very little of the water run through that side. Let them both overflow into the middle/return area and back up to the display.

I forgot, the main reason that everyone tees off their return is to recycle the water through the fuge.