Alternative Refugium strategies

[AlanM]

From what I understand, and has been stated in this forum several times, a traditional refugium with macroalgae is not compatible with ULNS systems.

The ULNS bacteria reduce the nutrients to the point where the macro will crash reintroducing a whole load of nutrients which somewhat defeats the point.

However, I'm planning on using a high level refugium to supply live food into the tank on a continuous basis, I'm thinking of having a mandarin (pair?) in the display and want to ensure that they don't go hungry.

At the moment for my royal gramma I have a tupperware container (rotis and copepods) which is fed on phyto and an amount of that is turkey basted into the main tank daily, the fish love that feed! Chasing the copepods around before plucking them out of the water, great sport!

Now that ULNS has been around a little while, has any body managed to have an alternative refugium up and running producing lots of little critters? I'm going to have a phyto reactor which could supply the system with a continuous food supply but it's the higher life I want to support.

:thanks:

[jobr]

Alan on my Perc i currently have a hang on fuge.

Good algae growth but more importantly a constant supply of live food for my Mandarin and Wet Morela.

My new build will be based on ULNS with Grotech and Fauna Marin equipment / supplements.

i don't see why an area of my sump after the equipment can't have some live rock rubble etc in it to help support the required life.

[ickypimp]

I dont think you will see a crash of the macros just a gradual decline to be honest.. as for the pods... I have a mud bed and LRR in my fuge... i guess to maintain the pods you would have to dose plenty of phyto...

[KeithM]

I believe a cryptic refugium would be compatible with this system. compared to my previous systems, going ULNS has increased the amount of sponges and tunicates in my tank on the underside of the rocks. Its probably due to the extra food as bacterial mulm/floc from shaking the reactor

[AlanM]

A cryptic zone was where I was headed I think on this one. I was thinking of an overtank fuge gravity feeding into the display, but there isn't any reason why this couldn't just become the benthic zone cryptic tank with a good supply of rubble.

A phyto reactor is already to be hooked up to feed the top tank, be it the fuge or cryptic tank. A steady supply of phyto will increase the food in the tank with the ULNS reactor to take out the residue.

The idea is to have to feed the tank with as little flake as possible, hopefully the phyto going in will provide a large amount of live food for the higher inhabitants.

A trip down to STM may be on the cards to get several buckets of rubble, that way I can ship totally immersed and loose as little life as possible.

[Jon B]

Can you just smash a load of LR up for a cryptic rubble zone? Im also thinking of setting one up above the tank.

[AlanM]

Can you just smash a load of LR up for a cryptic rubble zone? Im also thinking of setting one up above the tank.

You could, I've got a bit too much reef bones stacked up in the garage at the moment so I'm going to bash some of that and some STM farm grunge as well to seed it.

Farm grunge at £7.99/kg is cheaper than LR and probably far more alive, as STM say feed it heavily and it will give you a huge amount of life. I was going to take a trip to see them and fill one a poly box with the stuff and water so that it's transported submerged, minimum of die off. Going to wait until it's a little warmer and shouldn't cool down much either.