Refugium with chaeto or bio-pellet reactor

[davej]

I am in the process of setting up a new tank, a 60 gallon solana cube.
I will be running a vertex omega skimmer in a roughly 20 gallon sump.
I will be heavy on the zoas with a few LPS as well.
I was reading thru a thread on reef2reef by a guy name Jourdy, and he has had great sucess with bio-pellets.
I have built a chamber for a refugium in my sump originaly to put chaeto in there, but have been reading up on bio-pellet lately.
Being a new build would I be better served with refugium of reactor?
Please post your reasons for your decision as well.

[Craigdillman]

This all depends on what your goals are and what it plans for the tank are

Are you keeping some mandrins or fish needing pod population? Get the fuge
Are you more worried about nutrient export or nitrates and phosphates get the pellets
Using the fuge as sole nutrient export won't work either unless your cheato is he size of your DT it helps but can't be the sole nutrient export

So it all depends on what your doing with the tank
Both will work givin the circumstances

My 2 cents

[straightrazorguy]

....I have both. I started out with the refugium. I love the pods and all the critters that thrive in the predation-free environment. But, as far as bacteria population and nutrient reduction, the biopellet is more effective. So, I added the biopellet reactor later and kept my refugium. My tank is thriving, and my copperband is nice and fat.

[davej]

Originally Posted by Craigdillman

This all depends on what your goals are and what it plans for the tank are

My goal is to have beautiful happy zoas.
something like this (Hope its ok to borrow link to his picture)

[iceman86]

Chaeto to grow pods
Reactor for nutrient export
Your sump is way too small to have enough chaeto for nutrient export. Reactor is less maintenance too. If you end up running both, be careful not to strip your system of nutrients or your chaeto will die.

[davej]

Originally Posted by iceman86

Your sump is way too small to have enough chaeto for nutrient export.

Just to clear it up my sump is 24 x 24 15



I fiured the 20 gallons is the axctual volume of the water in the sump.

Refugium is 6 X 18 12"

Here is a picture without water, refugium is up front

[reefwars]

Personally I would use a soluable carbon source like vinegar or vodka or mox of both instead of pellets.

With pellets there really is no control , you run the risk of the pellets failing if the reactor fails and not to mention they take up space , smell and are expensive.

If space is available I would combine a few different export methods .

Macro algae , GAC /gfo , carbon dosing , skimming etc.

my zoanthid systems are vinegar dosed and that keeps nitrates undetectable and po4 is also undetectable on a Hanna phosphorous.

With po4 so low the beauty is I can cut my carbon doses down if I need to or raise as I need to.

Between vodka , pellets and vinegar I've noticed that the zoanthids respond very well to the acetic acid and growth and colors couldn't be better.

[davej]

Do I need to take anything into consideration,in regards to vinegar dosing, with the fact that this is a new setup. Rock is well established and cycled.
Rock came from an established tank, and has been in spare tank for a couple of months. Sand will be brand new caribsea Fiji pink.
Once tank is settled I will be moving zoa's out of
RSM 130D.

On Another tangent might as well ask it here. I had fairly high phosphate in my existing tank. Upwards of 4ppm (Hanna meter) so I started running rowaphos to bring phosphate down. All of a sudden after bringing levels down I had an outbreak of green algae, never had a spec of it for almost a year. But was worried high phosphate was making zoa's unhappy. Phosphates were brought down to 0.02 over a couple of weeks, any insight as to why I had the algae outbreak?

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by davej

Do I need to take anything into consideration,in regards to vinegar dosing, with the fact that this is a new setup. Rock is well established and cycled.
Rock came from an established tank, and has been in spare tank for a couple of months. Sand will be brand new caribsea Fiji pink.
Once tank is settled I will be moving zoa's out of
RSM 130D.

On Another tangent might as well ask it here. I had fairly high phosphate in my existing tank. Upwards of 4ppm (Hanna meter) so I started running rowaphos to bring phosphate down. All of a sudden after bringing levels down I had an outbreak of green algae, never had a spec of it for almost a year. But was worried high phosphate was making zoa's unhappy. Phosphates were brought down to 0.02 over a couple of weeks, any insight as to why I had the algae outbreak?

if its a new setup i would wait until the first fish foods are added before starting. other than that youll be fineas c/n and p are limiting factors in bacterial growth.i

ts hard to say as for the algae , algae also uses nitrates as well and other things including iron.

bryopsisi has been know to do quite well in low po4 envioroments as well some other macro algaes.


not sure why at 4ppm you werent getting algae but i have known plenty of tanks with high po4 and no algae issues , the consensus is that is if algae isnt an issue then po4 isnt a huge concern that needs to be fixed overnight. in fact if po4 becomes too limiting then corals begin to suffer.

sudden drops or rises however in po4 tend to cause harm to hard corals and even zoanthids.

[davej]

Algae wasn't an issue but zoa's were clamping up and unhappy.
I was afraid that high phosphate was causing this. That was why I went down the road of reducing my phosphate levels. I never had a spec of visible green algae for a year. It was only after I lowered the levels to 0.04 levels that I had an outbreak of algae. I also added some new cuc to help out.