What critters are refug safe? Any crabs? or will the munch on the micro’s . Thanks
Traditionally the concept of refugium would make all critters “non-safe”. The idea is to provide a safe place for micro-fauna to breed and grow without the danger of being concsumed before they have a chance to get to the main display tank where they can be a taasty treat for your fish.
I would steer clear of any crabs. Maybe a snail or two to cut down on algae, but often the algae is what the microorganisms are feeding on, so even that is iffy. As CDangelO said, the main purpose is a place for pods and such to grow.
Have to heavily agree with what Craig and Joe said above with a couple of notes. If with the way your tank is currently set up and maintained, you have a mass amount of diverse microfuana without having a fuge and it has been this way for 6 months or so, then you may not need a “refuge” for these inverts. Further more if the way it is set up you are getting cyano growth or un-desirable macro algae growth in your display you may want to set up a refugium for the purpose of growing macro algae for nutrient absorption. If that is the only reason for setting up the “refugeâ€ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ, then you could put in some cool inverts such as crabs that won’t eat macro.
Now if you’re tank is still young and it isn’t fully stocked the large amount and variety of little, “bugs†and “crittersâ€ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ(microfuana) may shrink in time and having a fuge without crabs will help prevent their numbers from getting very low. Crabs, hermit or otherwise, are ruthless scavengers and will eat just about anything and everyone has its’ own personality. Even, “reef safe†crabs will occasionally bother clams and corals. The ultimate decision comes down to you.
Now it may be confusing if you read some threads out there of experienced hobbyist who find a problem invert such as a hermit crab fighting with an LPS for some food and they tell everyone it is going in the sump or in the refugium.
A refugium can be a refuge for microfuana critters such as isopods, amphipods, copepods, mysis shrimp, and so on.(If you are unfamiliar with these critters then you certainly don’t need to buy a crab from an LFS to have a cool critter in your tank, set up a fuge, wait week and go in with a flash light at night time) On the other side it could be a refuge for macroalgae such as red macros, or caulerpas from being foraged on by fish that eat algae. Either way would greatly benefit all the fish, corals, and higher invertebrate life in the aquarium.
In my dream system I would have two “refugiums”. One would be moderate flow with sand bed, mangroves, money plant, some red macros, and so on.(more traditional refugium) The second would be higher flow, bare bottom with a mass of chaetomorph macro floating around and spinning in the flow. In the second tank I may or may not throw in some sort of cool crab or something non- reef safe.
We were tunning our refuge, but today, something went wong…
mushrooms, little dark, shriveled, nemos’ buddy hiding, jumped off the ledge once allready, he is looking better now, did amonia check and nitrate, .5 on amonia, nitrates 0…
Nemo is hidding, but when we handle his amone, he allways gets pissed.
Tang, running all around, likes the water.
Clam is stayed closed up, moved him for a while in fresh batch, then back, looking better now…
we distured the refuge, gave it 8 hrs to settle, but something didn’t set right.
We’ll do some more test later on phosphates, nitrite.
we did pick up some amon. filter media to help .
What was that rule, if it’s working, don’t mess with it.?.
So the negative stuff happened when the fuge was added or an unexplained time? If it’s a mystery have you checked time night and day? Hard to tell what happened. How mature was the tank before adding the fuge and exactly what was added with the fuge?
accually, when we took the double stack fuge, and put it all into a 90 gal tank.
The top fuge was cleao., Bottom fuge was calerpa (leaf) and mud, sand. We moved every little critter out of the bottom fuge (3-5 years old) 2 with us, old owner had it for some time. , So massive disruption. let it all settle, all day, slowing dripping waters back and forth over 3 hrs. checking salt contents, ect.
It did boil down to mid day today, saw some 1/4 long (thought were feather dusters) stuck to main tank (180) glass. Something in fuge made it up their… So, being the hey that doesnt; belong their, they quickly got wiped to go down stairs in fuge filter. After battleing apatasia once, if I dont; know what it is, it gets killed quickly… so their was something in the water.
No phosphat, ph , nitrate, or nitrite, just a little off ballanced on amonia, (had it also checked at FishMan, double checking) He said you did all that, and it;s only a little out?
I read some on the caluerpa, when it;s trying to survive, will realeas spores
Maybe I stresed it by moving it into new tank, separating it a little. , if the spores landed all over the mushroms, ect. , trying to find out if that would brown them… yikes…
On the brighter side, I now have 2 refuges for sale, one 30 gal, one sump, with pipe outlets. spot for a skimer (I think).
If the caulerpa turned white and released spores as you say,then that could cause a spike in ammonia and a whole host of other problems.Back in the 80’s when everyone was using caulerpa to keep the nitrates low in their reef tank-I saw many people have there tank completely wiped out when the caulerpa went sexual…
You might want to get yourself a polyfilter and keep one on hand in case of an emergency.They are effective at removing ammonia,heavy metals,phosphates and organics
Good at removing meds too.
I allways have one or 2 around as a “fire extinguisher” in case of trouble…
Disturbing an existing sand bed whether in a display tank or in a refugium can spell bad news. There is a lot of stuff in the beds that can be released in to the water column (sulfur, phosphates, dead stuff) that can cause a lot of havoc in the tank.
Carbon, phosphate pad, skimmer, and a few water changes and you should be ok.
It is rough for me to follow you. It may help if you could re-read before you post.
Could you clarify what you mean in this paragraph?
"It did boil down to mid day today, saw some 1/4 long (thought were feather dusters) stuck to main tank (180) glass. Something in fuge made it up their… So, being the hey that doesnt; belong their, they quickly got wiped to go down stairs in fuge filter. After battleing apatasia once, if I dont; know what it is, it gets killed quickly… so their was something in the water. "
If the caulerpa went sexual it would pretty much completely dissolve and disappear.
As Craig said the most likely issue was the disturbed sand bed which likely released extra nutrients into the water column and caused an issue. To intensify the problem there was like a large amount of bacteria and animals in the sand bed that did not survive and died and released more nutrients. Dilution is the best method to reduce it and whenever there is a mystery element carbon won’t hurt.(it will remove toxins and excess nutrients)
Hope everything turns out well sooner then later.
yeah, you probably got a nutient burst when you churned up the sand bed. it will burn out in a week or so. add some extra bacteria like Microbe lift and Nite-out. increase oxygenation, filter phosphates with some GFO, and a bit of poly pad and stuff like that to get you over the disruptive nutrient hump. and do filter out all the mud you stir up, that you can. you cant expect things to be the same when you dig in the dirt. but its a good time to help clear the mud. and do some water changes. it will be fine.
I checked both phos, and ph, and nitrite, nothing out of wack. I took a small artist paintbrush and spent some time brushing the ameone and others, wiped the crap off them.
Gord, sorry about that. And yes they say most spores will get sucked into returns, and eventually die off, But would the initial coating stress the corals?. There are a few mushrooms in the 90 gal refuge , right under the Caluarpa, that didn’t get affected like the others did. with the baffle, they are not in immediate water flow when it released. Everything was ok , that night, and early morning, It seemed like it happend mid morning, after I disturbed the calerpa, and just after the morning light cycle, (which is when all other post I found happens.)
I had filter the new refuge for hours, but In hindsite, I should have cliped a 50 micron sheet to the divider, so that it had to get filtered again, before leaving the refuge.
So your positive the macro went sexual? Just about none of it left and their was a significant amount before?
Now, at the end of the day Gord, the only thing i’m positive is, “Fish , it’ s what’s for dinner”.
What ever happen, funeral will be tomorow, Don’t know if a skimmer would pull out whatever is bad. I changed out 30 gal at noon.
Ive had a whole 29 tank full of rubble rock covered in foot high taxifolia go asexual or just dump its chloroplasts right before my eyes. it started just after the lights went on, an a few minutes later at one end, some macro started window paning, dumping its color in what looked like smoke rising from it. in a couple minutes, the entire tank full of taxifolia had dumped, and turned to a clear cellulose skeleton. and it was done. the water was a cloudy green. the macro died back to its foot holds, but i never lost any of the fish in the tank. it had only a big bio wheel filter and no skimmer and no sump. of course i did a 50% water change. but all was well. this happened many times as the taxifolia grew back. when it ate itself out of house and home , it would crash again.
currently i have a big wad of chaeto and some razor macro in a 40 breeder below my old frag tank. its like a fuge with plenum sand bed and some rock and two big tangs. well, pretty often, every couple months the razor dumps and dies back . only takes a minute. but no harm to the fish, the tank or the frag tank. it just gets recycled. all by itself. it never bothered the 7 year old spawning pair of clown fish in the system. they just kept right on laying eggs every 2 weeks, to this day.
you must have some other kind of problem.
[quote=“kaptken, post:16, topic:3173”]
you must have some other kind of problem. [/quote]
I’ll know if it’s fixed in the morning, just got done a full tank drain down, remixing 200 plus gallons, I have a real good ideal what it was.
Funeral tomorow for the tang, he was a trooper.