best way to make a refugium?

[fishboy10]

i want a refugium in a cheap way to get copepods to populate my 20 gallon nano reef i see a lot crawling around my rocks but i know its not enough to sustain a mandarin is there a good way to populate a lot more and are there any frozen or pellet foods mandarins would love

 

[Lenny_S]

Depending on how you define "cheap" CPR makes a nice HOB fuge... http://www.cpraquatic.com/products/aquafuge.html
The great thing about this one is that water is pumped into the refugium (unlike many sumps where it's pumped out after the refugium). This means that whatever pods mature and go into the tank just spill into the thank rather than going through a pump. I imagine the mortality rate going through a pump is quite high :-O

 

[clee36]

im the sump? or a hang on?
i put a home depot phillips led over my sump with a "baseball" sized chuck of chaeto and a few peices of rock.
it looks like a science experiment in there with the amount of things growing in it.
now every 2 weeks im trashing about 2 "softball" sized amounts.
if you use chaeto, it will probably be seeded with pods from wherever you get it from.

 

[JedClampett]

You could turn an Acuaclear filter into a refugium pretty easily, and have some miracle mud, live rubble rock, and chaeto in it:)

 

[JedClampett]

I'm planning on doing the same thing with my Acuaclear