Refugiums really do work, but can they work too well?

[NS Mike D]

Yeah controlling the efficiency of the refugium is not easy. I gradually migrated my tank from vodka to chaeto refugium, mostly to rasie night time pH. When the fuge completely replaced vodka and kept nitrate to 0, the growth of the tank visibly slowed down, and I'm trying to find way to limit it. On the other hand, vodka dosing is super easy to control, just adjust the doser by 1ml and next week I can measure the difference already. Why there aren't many grow light LED that can control intensity? Even kessil h380 can't do that ...

I think it's just cheaper to control the photo period with a timer - which you (arguably) need to do anyway to give the algae a rest period

 

[lbacha]

I think it's just cheaper to control the photo period with a timer - which you (arguably) need to do anyway to give the algae a rest period

I use my apex to control my h80 and cheap abay grow light tht I run on my fuge. I use the lights to control PH so I run a lot of light over my fuge for most of the day to keep ph at 8.3.

I do have to dose kno3 and kh3po4 as a result since the fuge uses these nutrients along with CO2 (this is how I raise my ph)

 

[jh2pizza]

I have no measurements to support it, but when I set up my new system a few years back. I wanted simple. Figured I would just handle the water parameters with additional water changes. Sold off all 3 reactors, removed the filter socks, no valves, no extra pumps. I began sending my water in for testing to get a better idea on what my system would need as far as water changes. I quickly realized less is much more. I do a 25G water change every 6-8 weeks, water levels are much more stable and the coral look great. I think the biggest change was going to an auto feeder for the everyday feedings and feeding frozen food once a week. The auto feeder allows me to have much better control and less waste polluting the water. Also the position of the autofeeder. Dropping sinking pellets right in front of the power head allowed the food to be eaten versus going into the overflow and eventually back into the water column.

 

[jh2pizza]

dbl post

 

[DigitalFishAquariums]

I ran my refugium and fed a TON (I work from home right next to the tank so i do small feedings 3-4 times a day) everything was great until i had to leave for three weeks and as my wife was watching the tank and she's gone during the day so feeding levels dropped, usually this would be ok, or at least I've done it before, but this time was different.

Apparently while i wasn't paying attention, the timer failed on the Refugium light and it stayed on 24 hours. This wasn't really messing up my parameters, i'd noticed nitrate and phosphate dropping a bit but not enough to diagnose an issue. When I got home from my trip however, my chaeto had all turned white, the nitrates had hit ~0/TLTD. Phosphates were measurable (actually very high around 1.4) and I had created a dino outbreak, brown trendrils of snotty horror everywhere, corals bleaching and even in some cases craters where some polyps used to be, I was very worried for my tank.

I bought and dosed nitrates which refused to come off 0 for a few days, but adding it my phosphate PLUMMETED when I did this. After the phosphates became the limiting factor the dino stopped going crazy and i started seeing green/coraline algea again. sadly this event devistated my snail population, but all my fish and coral seem to have made it.