fuge. . . . . kinda

[mdavis735]

i have a 90 gallon oceanic corner tank.it has a 20 gallon oceanic sump.the sump only has 2 compartmenets.one for the eheim in sump pump and the other has the skimmer.it does have one of the black plastic boxes that is in one side that has three solid sides and one side is egg crate type material.it has a glass lid with a hole for the overflow.i would assume its for bio balls or some other filter media.i was wondering if it would be benificial or worth the money and trouble to put some live rock rubble and chaeto in there.would add a light of course.any input would be greatly appreciated.

[swjim]

I've used live rock rubble in this type of an area successfully in the past. There was a decent pod population and I never saw any negative impacts. That said, I didn't see as much life in this area as I have seen in my dedicated refugiums. If you get an inexpensive PC light from Home Depot or Lowes this could be an inexpensive experiment that I believe is worth trying but I would consider at least two potential concerns:

1. Is there any chance that the chaeto and liverock could disrupt the flow through the chamber enought to cause the chamber to overflow outside of the sump?

2. How high is the flow through this chamber? If you want to truly offer a refuge for microfauna an extremely turbid area might be less than ideal. If you're just trying to grow algae away from the main tank then this is probably less of a concern although the chaeto may get pushed into another chamber if you have a lot of flow. IME chaeto does fine with enough flow where it rolls/tumbles but I've never subjected it to more than that, others will need to chime in with their experience as to what its limits might be before it falls apart or dies.

[subsailor]

chaeto does fine in a good flow situation

[MKCindy]

I had a 8 gallon bio-ball type sump on my 40 gallon. I modified it by adding a third wall to create the over under over (also made it 1 inch apart so I could run charcoal filters when algae got bad) I added live rock where the bio-balls were and floated chaeto over the live rock. (didn't have a skimmer chamber) Worked great and had lotsa pods until I put some Peppermint Shrimp in there, they ate my pods. (big no-no and I had to break it down to get them out) I just modified a old PC light from an Eclipse, worked great.
melevsreef.com has some great info on sumps and refuges

[mdavis735]

thats cool.i really appreciate all your input.my main concern is finding a way to not have any algae growing on the tank walls.other than coraline of course.i also would like a little help keeping nitrates down.i know this is a contributing factor to algae and would kill two birds with one stone,or at least rubble from one stone.haha

[MeteorFlower]

I made myself a little sump/fuge from an old 20 gallon long that I had lying around. i filled the fuge part with rubble rock, broken shells and a little live sand, then added some chaeto. It's done really well with just a $5 clip on lamp from Home Depot (so far)! Also, it seems the chaeto I got (mainly from Aquatek) had a bit of grape caulerpa in it, which now grows like a weed and helps keep my nitrates down. I just prune it back when it gets too wild, and my pygmy angel and my boyfriend's hippo tang always have fresh macroaglae for their veggie clips now I say go for it.

[mdavis735]

cool.i will have to give it a try.hopefully i'll get time to set it up this weekend