Miracle mud and DSB in refugium??

[Arnie]

Hi everyone...

I have my sump with refugium running for about 3 months now for my 65g tank, I have DSB and a 2-3 small live rocks with chaeto and caulerpa. I recently purchased 10lbs of Miracle Mud.

Can I put the Miracle Mud in trays and add it on top of the DSB?

Or should I remove the DSB and just put miracle mud?

Removing the DSB would release a lot of toxins in the water, even though I can turn the pumps off.

I have an aqueon sump model 2, so the refugium is about 10-7/8 (L) x 9-7/8 (W) x 16 (H).

Any advice would really help...

Thanks...

 

[Reefing Madness]

You can add the mud to the top, but I don't see any reason to run them both, unless a DSB is what your after, and the mud won't run deep enough. Shut off the system, remove the sand and water, throw in the mud and re-fill.

 

[Arnie]

You can add the mud to the top, but I don't see any reason to run them both, unless a DSB is what your after, and the mud won't run deep enough. Shut off the system, remove the sand and water, throw in the mud and re-fill.

Thanks so much... did it... same thing Leng Sy of Miracle Mud said in his email reply to me...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What do you hope the MM is going to accomplish?

 

[Arnie]

What do you hope the MM is going to accomplish?

Looking for better growth and less skimming, I have a tight budget and a simple coralife skimmer, I believe is not skimming really good... MM should be able to compensate on some stuff needed in the system. I ran the skimmer 4-8hrs / day instead of 24/7...

 

[Rjramos]

Been reading along. I am a long time user and believer in MM, however, I have always followed Leng's recommendations precisely. I understand that we all have budget constraints, but in the end some things end up costing more( mm is expensive) or don't work when done incorrectly. From reading this I have noted some things.
1) Refugium sump is too small for a 65gal display. If you put 10 lbs of MM in there it's gonna be a DSB of MM.
Look at the recommended size sump on ecosystemaquarium.com for a 65gal.
2) There is also a recommended minimum and maximum rate going through the refugium. I don't know if you will be running your entire main display turnover rate through this small refugium, but it may be too fast to allow nutrients and detritus to settle and process.
The protein skimmer can be run 24/7 with the MM, but I would recommend turning it off for about 2 weeks after introducing MM.

Hope this helps,
Rich

 

[FlyinBryan]

MM all the way. I have everything in my fuge. Live rock rubble, live rock, live sand and mm and both chlorpa and cheato. It totally turned my tank around. Ive got goniapora going on 2yrs!

 

[icsparks]

If I was going to change over to MM I would go with MM all the way. Drain down the sump remove the sand and clean out the sump, add the MM lay egg crate on top of MM and place the rock on top of the crate and restart. I always place my MM in a bucket and fill with di water and skim off the nasty dirty water before adding to the tank. Google "Mike Paletta" he uses MM in his systems.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Looking for better growth and less skimming, I have a tight budget and a simple coralife skimmer, I believe is not skimming really good... MM should be able to compensate on some stuff needed in the system. I ran the skimmer 4-8hrs / day instead of 24/7...

I'm not sure that anything happening in a refugium, with or without MM, is similar to what happens in a skimmer, so I don't really understand how one relates to the other.

FWIW, I removed the deep sand beds from my refugia years ago since I didn't think they did much.

Does MM add stuff (li iron) that is useful to the water? Maybe. Does it add stuff that isn't useful/detrimental? Maybe.

I prefer to add what I think I need, rather than to rely on the hope that something like MM will do the job.

 

[Rjramos]

I'm not sure that anything happening in a refugium, with or without MM, is similar to what happens in a skimmer, so I don't really understand how one relates to the other.

FWIW, I removed the deep sand beds from my refugia years ago since I didn't think they did much.

Does MM add stuff (li iron) that is useful to the water? Maybe. Does it add stuff that isn't useful/detrimental? Maybe.

I prefer to add what I think I need, rather than to rely on the hope that something like MM will do the job.

I have run a 55 gal display on a mm refugium with no skimmer, the results were great for the 3 yrs it was up. On another occasion, on a 4 yr setup run Berlin style with skimmer, I could not stop hair algae blooms in the display, despite water changes and routine maintenance. I incorporated a mm refugium above the existing sump and within 1 month the hair algae disappeared. I currently run a mm refugium and skim on my 120 gal. I would say the skimming and Refugium are 2 completely different things, foam fractioning and a biological filter essentially. Skimming removes the organics in their raw form, and a refugium and it's macro algae take up the nutrients and process them into growth and harmless nitrogen. So, where I feel the methods have nothing to do, they do complement each other in keeping our tanks cleaner. MM is a substrate which through research was enhanced with additives to make micro fauna and macro algaes proliferate. I don't feel MM is something we add because our tank needs this or that, but a substrate prepared for its purpose in a refugium.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I have run a 55 gal display on a mm refugium with no skimmer, the results were great for the 3 yrs it was up. On another occasion, on a 4 yr setup run Berlin style with skimmer, I could not stop hair algae blooms in the display, despite water changes and routine maintenance. I incorporated a mm refugium above the existing sump and within 1 month the hair algae disappeared. I currently run a mm refugium and skim on my 120 gal. I would say the skimming and Refugium are 2 completely different things, foam fractioning and a biological filter essentially. Skimming removes the organics in their raw form, and a refugium and it's macro algae take up the nutrients and process them into growth and harmless nitrogen. So, where I feel the methods have nothing to do, they do complement each other in keeping our tanks cleaner. MM is a substrate which through research was enhanced with additives to make micro fauna and macro algaes proliferate. I don't feel MM is something we add because our tank needs this or that, but a substrate prepared for its purpose in a refugium.

When I said "needs", I was referring largely to macroalgae, not the corals and such.

OTOH, macroalgae can normally thrive on supplementing iron and no MM.

I certainly agree that refugia and skimmers compliment each other. I run both. My comment related to a post saying he wanted to use MM because he couldn't skim well. That doesn't make perfect sense to me, eitehr from the MM standpoint, or from refugia overall.